Remember that 2002 season we talked about a couple of weeks ago, the one that ended not with a trip to the Rose Bowl like everyone expected but to the Orange Bowl? Remember how that game in Miami started out so promising only to get well out of hand all too quickly?
Well today we get to enjoy a little payback.
This year, the Iowa Hawkeyes and USC Trojans will meet for the first time as conference foes. USC leads the all time series 7-3 and prior to 2019 Iowa’s only two wins came in 1950 and 1961. Both
of those games were close, one score affairs, while only one of USC’s seven wins was by seven points or less (1962). The other six were all blowouts. After the 2019 regular season, the 9-3 Hawkeyes would have a chance to avenge their Orange Bowl loss seventeen years earlier against the 8-4 Trojans in the Holiday Bowl.
Iowa suffered a different kind of loss before the game even kicked off. Two losses to be precise. Legendary coach Hayden Fry and long time athletic director Bump Elliott both passed away in the weeks leading up to the game. The Hawkeyes honored both by removing the Tigerhawk decals on their helmets, the third time in history the logos had been removed.
Despite the lopsided final score, the early game was about as exciting as you could ask for. Of the seven full drives in the first half, five ended in touchdowns. Iowa and USC traded first quarter touchdowns, a 23-yard Tyrone Tracy reverse and Drake London catch from Trojan quarterback Kedon Slovis.
Iowa regained possession but their subsequent drive extended into the second quarter. After fifteen plays and 72 yards, Iowa set up at the USC 6. Ihmir Smith-Marsette (remember that name, we’ll be talking about him some more) motioned to the opposite side of the formation before reversing right before the snap. Taking a handoff from Nate Stanley, Smith-Marsette outran the much ballyhooed speedy USC Trojan defense to the end zone to put Iowa back ahead 14-7. Credit to a young Sam LaPorta and Nate Wieting for setting an edge blocks to seal off the USC pursuit as well. It was a beautiful play call and executed perfectly to give Iowa the lead.
The Trojans wouldn’t go away quietly, however. Making liberal use of receivers London, Michael Pittman, and Amon-Ra St. Brown, Slovis guided his offense back to the end zone to tie the game back up. Throughout the first half, the Fox Sports team of Gus Johnson and Joel Klatt preached the potency of Mike Leach’s air raid offense at a school like USC with its bevy of 5-star talent. While the Iowa defense was making Slovis and Co. work for every yard, they were having success, and it looked like the offense would have to go punch for punch in order to stay in the game.
Of course, there aren’t just two phases to football, and on the ensuing kickoff the offense would get some help from Smith-Marsette and the special teams unit. Receiving the ball at his own 2, Smith-Marsette hopped over a would-be tackler and burst into open space along the near side. There was only the kicker left to make a play but Dillon Doyle easily kept him in check as #6 sped down the sideline for a monstrous kick return touchdown. It echoed CJ Jones’s opening kick return in the 2003 Orange Bowl and even Gus Johnson couldn’t resist a callback.
USC would go three and out on their next drive, punting the ball back to the Hawkeyes and giving them possession at midfield. Six plays later, Smith-Marsette would earn his third touchdown of the first half on a screen pass at the Trojan 12.
Smith-Marsette would have arguably his best game as a Hawkeye, with three total touchdowns and 203 all purpose yards. The only blemish: an incomplete pass into the end zone intended for Brandon Smith. Can’t have it all, I guess.
USC would get one last drive but they couldn’t find the end zone, settling for a field goal to close out the first half. Iowa held a 28-17 advantage at the break and had proven they could hang with the dangerous USC offense and give as good as they got. The Trojans proved early in the second half that Iowa couldn’t let their guard down, as they would only need four plays to go 75 yards for a touchdown thanks in large part to a bomb to Amon-Ra St. Brown on the drive’s penultimate play. Down 28-24, USC rolled the dice with an onside kick to build even more momentum and recovered. Iowa’s big first half and its good vibes felt like a distant memory.
But AJ Epenesa was having none of it, as he looped around the left tackle and knocked the ball out of Slovis’ hand. Not only that, but the strip injured the USC quarterback’s hand forcing him out of the game and bringing in Matt Fink in relief. The backup couldn’t build on that momentum that USC clawed back and after a third down sack by Nick Niemann the Trojans punted back to Iowa.
The Hawks would mount a 15-play, 90-yard drive which included one of the most memorable play sequences of the night. Deep in USC territory with 2nd and 2, Nate Stanley took a quarterback sneak a full eight yards to get inside the five. Not a surprising call in a short yardage situation. On first and ten…another sneak, less successful than the first with only two yards gained, but the thousands of Iowa fans in SDCCU Stadium loved it. On second down when Iowa once again lined up in a tight formation, everyone knew what was coming. Never mind that this third sneak only gained one yard and couldn’t get into the end zone, every single person not cheering for USC wanted Brian Ferentz to call a fourth one. But it wasn’t to be. Despite another tight formation, Stanley handed off to Tyler Goodson who crossed the goal line to put Iowa back up by double digits.
Things mostly settled into a punt-off until early in the third when, after recovering a Trojan fumble, Nate Stanley connected with Brandon Smith in the end zone for a 42-24 lead. By this point, it was pretty clear that USC was not going to come back. In fact, following those three sneaks in the third quarter, USC had only one drive longer than four plays for the rest of the game, and that drive ended with a missed field goal. Nick Niemann put an exclamation point at the end of this game with a pick six to make the final score 49-24. Iowa had gotten their revenge for 2003 in dominating fashion that would’ve made Bump and Hayden proud.
The Hawkeyes face the USC Trojans in the LA Coliseum this fall. We’ll see if the Trojans harbor a similar grudge that Iowa did back in 2019.
Enjoy the full game replay below.
