Micah Hyde snatched the ball near the sideline, ran toward the middle of the field, even backward for a few yards before sprinting up the far sideline. Fill-in freshman Marcus Coker took a more direct approach at the Missouri Tigers: he ran right over them. Coker bulled his way through Missouri's defense in place of suspended starter Adam Robinson and Hyde scored the decisive touchdown on a meandering, 72-yard interception return in the fourth quarter, helping Iowa close out a difficult season with a 27-24 win over Missouri on Tuesday night in the Insight Bowl. "Sometimes stuff doesn't go your way and we saw that in the past games, but we stuck to it," Iowa defensive lineman Adrian Clayborn said. Undermanned due to injuries and suspensions, Iowa (8-5) turned to Coker, a backup who had 403 yards and a touchdown during the regular season. The bruising freshman had no trouble taking over for Robinson, running over and occasionally around the Tigers to set school records with 219 yards and 33 carries while scoring two touchdowns in front of an Insight Bowl-record 53,453 fans. Read more: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/recap?gameId=303622294
This was a nice win to cap off what ended up being a relatively disappointing season for me as an Iowa fan. Marcus Coker was an absolute beast last night, and if Adam Robinson gets dismissed from the team (which he should), it looks like we'll be in damn good hands next year at RB. Stanzi looked like the Stanzi that played most of last season instead of the Stanzi that was efficient and careful with the ball this year. He might have hurt his draft stock a bit with this performance, but I still think he could go around the 6th round and could end up being a steal to whomever drafts him, as long as they have some patience. Overall though, it was a nice win to end a crap year. And it sucks...because this was really the year that we've had our best chance at making noise nationally. We're going to lose a lot of players to the draft this year and will probably have question marks at most every position outside of RB and maybe QB (cause I assume Vandenberg will take that starting role, unless AJ Derby completely outplays him during the offseason).
