Oklahoma Holds Off Iowa in Insight Bowl at BetLM

Oklahoma Holds Off Iowa in Insight Bowl

TEMPE, Ariz. – Okla­homa was gain­ing yards in bits instead of its usual chunks. Its defense was solid before giv­ing up a pair of touch­downs in the fourth quar­ter to lose nearly all of a 21-point lead.

Then a cam­era fell from the sky.

It wasn’t always pretty, but the Soon­ers grinded out a win, clos­ing out a dif­fi­cult year that included the death of a team­mate and failed national title aspirations.

Blake Bell ran for his third touch­down in the clos­ing sec­onds and No. 19 Okla­homa sur­vived a late rally, not to men­tion the crash­ing cam­era, to beat Iowa 31–14 in the Insight Bowl on Fri­day night.

“We did exactly what we wanted to: end this with a win,” Okla­homa run­ning back Bren­nan Clay said.

Okla­homa (10–3) didn’t get a par­tic­u­larly great game from quar­ter­back Landry Jones and wasn’t effec­tive on the ground, either. Once con­sid­ered national-title con­tenders, the Soon­ers held off the gritty Hawkeyes, cap­ping a painful year that started with the death of line­backer Austin Box in the offseason.

Jones threw for 161 yards with a touch­down and an inter­cep­tion, and Bell put the game away with a 21-yard touch­down run with 45 sec­onds left.

“It means a lot; these guys per­se­vered,” Okla­homa coach Bob Stoops said. “(They) came out here tonight and played an excel­lent game.”

Iowa (7–6) fell into a 21–0 hole before ral­ly­ing behind two touch­down passes from James Vandenberg.

The Hawkeyes came up just short and dodged a poten­tial dis­as­ter when an over­head cam­era crashed to the field next to receiver Mar­vin McNutt in the clos­ing min­utes. McNutt became tan­gled in the wire after the cam­era landed a few yards behind him, but wasn’t hurt. The game was delayed 5 min­utes while the cam­era was dragged off the field.

“First, I looked: What is it that fell from the sky?”‘ McNutt said. “The next thing I know, the cam­era kind of scratched me a lit­tle bit. It was just pulling me and I knew I didn’t want to keep going with it.”

McNutt didn’t have the only near-miss.

Van­den­berg over­came an early inter­cep­tion to throw for 216 yards, and hit C.J Fiedorow­icz and Jor­dan Canz­eri on touch­down passes in the fourth quar­ter. He also had two inter­cep­tions– one early and one late– and Iowa’s short-handed run­ning game man­aged just 76 yards on 37 carries.

“We did some­thing things to hurt our­selves, but Okla­homa had a lot to do with that,” Iowa coach Kirk Fer­entz said.

Oklahoma’s return trip to the desert wasn’t expected, at least not this early in the bowl season.

Com­ing off a rout of Con­necti­cut in last year’s Fiesta Bowl, the Soon­ers were ranked No. 1 in the pre­sea­son, with hopes of a sec­ond national title under Stoops.

Those aspi­ra­tions were gone after a string of injuries– All-America receiver Ryan Broyles’ torn ACL was the big one– and two losses in the final three games, includ­ing a 44–10 rout by Bed­lam rival Okla­homa State in the regular-season finale.

The frus­trat­ing run knocked Okla­homa out of not only the national cham­pi­onship chase, but out of a BCS bowl and into the Insight Bowl.

Instead of mak­ing a state­ment in the desert, the Soon­ers seemed to stand still in the first half. Okla­homa had just 89 yards on 27 plays in the half, but led 14–0 thanks a pair of 4-yard runs by Bell– one set up by an inter­cep­tion and another on the Soon­ers’ only sus­tained drive.

The Soon­ers finally started to click, a least for a lit­tle while, in the sec­ond half.

Okla­homa drove inside Iowa’s 10 on its open­ing drive, though that ended with an acro­batic tip-and-catch inter­cep­tion by Iowa defen­sive line­man Brod­er­ick Binns.

The Soon­ers didn’t slow down, march­ing on their next drive for a 3-yard, play-action touch­down pass from Jones to Trent Rat­ter­ree– break­ing a streak of eight straight TDs by Bell– to go up 21–0.

The Hawkeyes finally fought back.

Iowa over­came the sus­pen­sion of its top run­ning back and a favored oppo­nent to win last year’s Insight Bowl, beat­ing Mis­souri 27–24. The Hawkeyes did it behind Mar­cus Coker, who ran for 219 yards and two touch­downs after replac­ing sus­pended starter Adam Robinson.

This time it was Coker who had to watch. The sopho­more, who ran for 1,384 yards and 15 touch­downs dur­ing the reg­u­lar sea­son, was sus­pended for vio­lat­ing the university’s student-athlete code of conduct.

With­out Coker, Iowa would have to rely on a group of unproven run­ning backs – none had more than 18 car­ries– and lean even more on Vandenberg.

No one was par­tic­u­larly effec­tive in the first half.

Van­der­berg was off-target early and had a pass inter­cepted by Jamell Flem­ing at Iowa’s 31-yard line in the first quar­ter, then exac­er­bated the mis­cue by being called for a late-hit penalty. Bell scored his first touch­down two plays later.

Iowa had just one sus­tained drive in the first half, but that petered out; the Hawkeyes lost 3 yards on fourth-and-1 from the Okla­homa 6.

Their run­ning game inef­fec­tive, the Hawkeyes bum­bled around most of the next two quar­ters before finally mov­ing the ball again late in the third quar­ter. Van­den­berg com­pleted seven of his eight passes on a 75-yard drive, the final an across-his-body throw for a 5-yard touch­down pass to Fiedorow­icz that cut Oklahoma’s lead to 21–7.

Van­den­berg then got the Hawkeyes within seven with 7 min­utes left, hit­ting Keenan Davis to con­vert on a fourth-and-10 to set up a 9-yard touch­down pass to Canz­eri on a screen.

That was it, though.

Oklahoma’s Mike Hun­ni­cutt fol­lowed a 35-yard field goal with just over 4 min­utes left and Bell added his final scor­ing run after the falling cam­era nearly took out McNutt, end­ing Iowa’s school-record bowl win­ning streak at three.

“We had a cou­ple of hic­cups out there,” Iowa defen­sive tackle Mike Daniels said. “The results show when you have hic­cups against a team like that.”

Thank­fully for the Hawkeyes and McNutt, the falling cam­era wasn’t more than a hiccup.

BetLM's sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more col­lege foot­ball news see: Okla­homa holds off Iowa in Insight Bowl .

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