A Trip Down Memory Lane: Remembering the Dominance of Evy, the Coach

Lately, I've found myself over at Sports Reference's college football site quite a bit, looking at Iowa's past results throughout history. After going back through the Ferentz and Fry years, I found myself gravitating to the late 1950's (you know, since the 60's and 70's were such a clusterfuck) and the fantastic Iowa teams led by none other than Forest Evashevski.

Evy, as most people called him, had an interesting career at Iowa. He coached a total of nine years for the Hawkeyes. The last five of which, are some of the greatest football Iowa has ever played. In the late 1950's, Evy (known for his stubborn ways) and Iowa's Athletic Director Paul Brechler had a public feud. Brechler left that year to be the commissioner of the Skyline Conference, and Evy tried to lead the Hawkeyes to more glory from above in 1961. As most Hawkeye fans know, however, Evy was a better coach than he was an AD. After he left the coaching seat, Iowa went into a tailspin that would take decades to correct.

So, to review very briefly: 1) Evy was not the most pleasant man in the world. 2) He was a terrible Athletic Director. But, this post isn't about either of those. Instead, this post is about his nine year career as the head coach of the Iowa Hawkeyes, and just how damn good he was at his job.

Let's start off by looking at the stat that coaches are most judged by. Wins.

It's pretty clear that it took Evashevski a couple years to build the program up. The first four years saw mediocre results, at best. Over the final five years, though, he made Iowa a powerhouse. Since the schedule was shorter back then, compared to how many games teams play now a days. Let's look at win percentage.

A Trip Down Memory Lane: The Most Disappointing Season Ever? 1997

One of the few pictures I could find of the 1997 season. And it doesn't go with this post at all!

Maybe the title is a little harsh. Maybe I should change it to the most underachieving season in the last 32 years, considering I only did the math going back to 1979. But, holy shit was this a spirit breaking season. Luckily for me, I was only 10 years old when this season happened, so I wasn't really aware of how much this team underachieved. My memories of this season were watching Tavian Banks and Tim Dwight make opposing players look stupid. Being that I was too young to understand how good that 1997 Iowa team should have been, 2010 was my most heartbreaking season. Throughout last year's collapse though, people kept comparing the 2010 team to the 1997 team. I didn't really think much of it at the time. Like I said, I had good memories of that team, and I figured that people were just making more of that team because they had two once-in-a-lifetime playmakers.

Then Black Heart Gold Pants came out with a post, talking about using points scored and points allowed to calculate a team's expected winning percentage. Football's Pythagorean Theorem, if you will. Naturally, being the Hawkeye nerd that I am, I decided to calculate Iowa's Pythagorean win percentage for every year all the way through 1979. Season by season, I entered points scored and points allowed into an Excel spread sheet and came up with an expected win percentage.

Naturally, the 2010 team really underperformed. They were expected to win about 2 more games than they actually did. However, their difference of 2.13 more expected wins than actual wins, was not the worst. Not even in the Ferentz era. The 2008 season 2.46 was slightly worse (as BHGP pointed out here). When you add Fry's twenty year career into the equation, 2010 was the fifth most underachieving team as predicted by the Pythagorean Theorem. So what season was number one, you might ask? And by a very large margin? Why, 1997 of course.

Let's look at the Top Five Most Underachieving Iowa Teams since 1979 through the eyes of football's Pythagorean Theorem:

A Trip Down Memory Lane: 2006 Iowa at Syracuse, "The Stand"

Yeah. That seems about right. (Photo, obviously, courtesy of LIFE Magazine)

Every Hawkeye fan remembers this game. Which is funny, because the game was so bad, had it ended under normal circumstances, nobody would want to remember this game. Or care to reflect on it years later at all. Syracuse wasn't a very good team. They had lost 10 straight coming into this game, and would finish the 2006 season with a 4-8 record. Iowa was definitely the superior football squad. However, Iowa was also missing their three year starter at quarterback, Drew Tate. Tate did not play due to a strained abdominal muscle, that had been bothering him since before the season. As it turned out, this was all the Orange needed to make it this a game.

To reiterate my point about this game being ugly. Take a look at the drive chart:

  

Iowa's fourth drive ended in a touchdown, and their eighth drive ended in a field goal. That was it for regulation. Of their 9 drives in regulation that didn't end with a score, Iowa ended 4 of them with an interception, 4 with a punt, and 1 with a missed field goal. Yikes.

Syracuse scored a touchdown on their first drive, and didn't turn the ball over as much as the Jason Manson quarterbacked Hawkeyes did. However, they also didn't move the ball very much. In their 10 drives that did not end in a score, Syracuse only had 1 drive where they averaged above 4 yards per play. That one drive, the tenth drive, they averaged 6.71 yards per play, but then missed a field goal. They also had three drives where they went backwards, averaging negative yards per play. In other words, Iowa's defense was doing it's best to win the game, despite an offense that was doing it's best to give away the game.

In the end, the defense did win this game for Iowa. I mean, the offense got the winning touchdown in overtime. But, the defense put together an amazing 8 play goal line stand. The Iowa defense did give Syracuse every opportunity to tie the game, as they decided to get called for pass interference at the goal line twice. Nonetheless, the penalties ended up making this goal line stand even more special, and these 8 plays, are what made Hawkeye fans want to go from drinking to forget this game, to drinking in celebration of this game. So, let's reflect on those final 8 plays. Shall we?

A Trip Down Memory Lane: 2009's Suffocating Pass Defense

Note: This is a series I've decided to put together to get us through the long months until football kicks off. It could be a season, a game, or one play. Hell, it could be anything that stuck out to me at some point in time about Iowa sports. Either way, just enjoy this trip back in Hawkeye history.

2009 was a special season. Though, it almost started off a nightmare, as Iowa needed two blocked field goals to beat the Panthers of Northern Iowa. The Hawkeyes started off the season 9-0 and made it as high as number 4 in the BCS. However, dreams of an undefeated season, and even a possible national championship birth, were shattered when Corey Wootton sacked Ricky Stanzi in the endzone, rolling his ankle underneath him. The Hawkeyes were still able to finish 11-2, and finished the season with a BCS Bowl win. 

The team may have finished with only 2 losses, but it was far from a balanced team. This was a defensively dominating team, with a below average offense. Want to see just how unbalanced this team was? Let's take a look.

(What is this chart?)

The offense was below the Big 10 average in every category. You name it, they were not very good at it. The running game was especially terrible, as they were 32% below the Big 10 average in yards per carry and touchdowns per carry. The offense, however, did have some special moments.  Namely, the Indiana comeback on Halloween and Stanzi to McNutt to beat Michigan State. But, make no mistake, this team was led by the defense.

 
The only category in which Iowa was below average on defense in, was tackles for loss ("Getting in the Backfield" on the chart), as I discussed in this post. Their 8.65% of opponent plays ending in negative yardage, was a solid number, that would have been around the Big 10 average in most years. There just happened to be a lot of teams that were good at bringing down their opponents behind the line of scrimmage that year. Other than that, Iowa abused their opponents on the defensive side of the ball in 2009. 

They were 40% better than the Big 10 average at shutting down the run. 37% better than average at not letting their opponents score. In fact, they allowed only 13.08 defensive points per game (Points allowed by the defense only. Does not include touchdowns given up by offense or special teams), which was 9 points per game better than the Big 10 average. They even forced 17% more turnovers than average. 

In other words, this defense ate opponents alive. The special part of the 2009 defense, though, may have been their ability to shut down opposing teams' passing attacks. Which is what these six long-winded paragraphs were leading into.

A Trip Down Memory Lane: Shonn Greene vs Purdue 2008 (aka the Frank Duong Game)

Note: This is a series I've decided to put together to get us through the long months until football kicks off. It could be a season, a game, or one play. Hell, it could be anything that stuck out to me at some point in time about Iowa sports. Either way, just enjoy this trip back in Hawkeye history.

2008 was Shonn Greene's season, and the rest of the Big 10 was just there for him to run through. Well, run through or run by. Because the 5'11 235 lb running back could also put a move on you too. Don't believe me? Ask Frank Duong. He witnessed firsthand these two talents that Greene possessed when Purdue visited Iowa City in November of 2008. While this game was awesome, it was probably Greene's second best effort of the year, as he had single-handedly demolished Wisconsin a month earlier. But, I chose this game to take deeper look at for a couple of reasons: 1) I was at this game, and Greene looked like a man amongst boys 2) He was basically Iowa's only offense on this day 3) This was his final game at Kinnick, and boy did he put on a show 4) Last but not least, from this game forward, I have referred to anyone who gets trucked in a game of football, as getting "Duong'd." 

Before paying homage to Frank Duong, let's check out Greene's numbers from this game.

Carries     Yards     Yards Per Carry     TD

    30           211              7.03                 2        

Besides a 22 yard touchdown run by Jewel Hampton in the first quarter, Shonn Greene was the Iowa Hawkeyes offense that day. Going for over 200 yards on the ground and averaging more than 7 yards per carry. 

This was Ricky Stanzi's first year under center, and he really looked like it. He finished the game with 72 yards passing on 15 attempts. Knowing that Greene was Iowa's best bet at picking up yards and running the clock down, Ferentz kept giving the ball to him. Iowa ran the ball 37 times, and, as you can see above, Greene received 81.08% of the carries, or 56.60% of Iowa's plays consisted of Greene carrying the ball. It was the kind of game plan that Kirk Ferentz seems to love: run the ball down the opponents throat, running the clock down, and then let your defense do it's thing. The nerve racking thing about it, from an Iowa fan's perspective, was that Purdue was keeping the game uncomfortably close (Thank God, Curtis Painter didn't play very much of this game). 

A Trip Down Memory Lane: Tavian Banks' 1997 Season

Note: This is a series I've decided to put together to get us through the long months until football kicks off. It could be a season, a game, or one play. Hell, it could be anything that stuck out to me at some point in time about Iowa sports. Either way, just enjoy this trip back in Hawkeye history.

Ah. 1997. I remember it just like it was yesterday. Actually, no I don't. Considering when the Hawkeyes kicked off the 1997 season, I was 3 months away from my tenth birthday, I don't remember a whole lot from that season. Here's what I do remember from that time period: 1) Tavian Banks was Awesome. 2) Tim Dwight was awesome. This post, however, is about the former rather than the latter. (I'll probably do a Dwight post at some point too).

Tavian Banks was my favorite player as a kid. Why? Well, this can probably explain why. He was a playmaker. Banks was more of a finesse runner, he wasn't going to bowl you over. But, his combo of great vision and speed, allowed him to make one cut and leave everybody in a cloud of dust. Every time he touched the ball, 9 year old me looked on in awe, because I knew there was a chance that something spectacular could take place.

Banks' career at Iowa had a bit of bad timing, however. The high school star, who chose Iowa over offers from Nebraska, Washington, and Miami, to name a few, attended Iowa during the same period that another very good running back was carrying the ball for the Hawkeyes. Sedrick Shaw and Tavian Banks were quite the one-two punch, going for over 1,500 yards on the ground combined in 1995 and over 2,000 in 1996. However, Shaw got the majority of the carries (316 to 66 in 1995 and 224 to 144 in 1996) during the time period that they were teammates.

When Shaw was drafted in the third round of the NFL Draft, Banks finally got his chance in 1997 to show what he could do as the number one running back. He didn't disappoint. His final line for the year looked like this:

Games        Carries        Yards        TD        YPC        YPG        Carries Per TD
   11               260           1691         17         6.50         140.92            15.29

The former football and soccer star from Bettendorf, had gotten the most carries of his collegiate career and put up his best average yards per carry on top of it. Not to mention, he also set the Iowa single season record for rushing yards and touchdowns, which would stand for a little over a decade, when Shonn Greene would break them. 

Banks had finally got his chance to be the number one guy during his Senior year, and he took the opportunity and ran with it. Literally. Since I'm not much of a writer, I didn't write this to be just a narrative on Tavian Banks career. I'm more interested in how good he was. In other words, the numbers. So, let's take a look at the damage Banks did to opposing teams during his 1997 campaign. Shall we?