It is not very often that we see Big Ten football after midnight. The players in Kinnick Stadium certainly did not expect to receive their first taste of Sunday football against Nevada, especially with a 6:30 CST kickoff on Saturday night.
Mother Nature though had her own plans, hitting the Hawkeyes with multiple lightning delays. The pauses in the action pushed the finish of the game back hours later than anticipated, further postponing the Hawkeyes road to recovery ahead of their Big Ten clash against Rutgers.
Quarterback Spencer Petras, who didn’t get to sleep after the game until 3:30 a.m. and probably had a “couple cups” of coffee to push through the Sunday team meeting, spoke during media availability about the road to recovery after such a late game.
“Recovery is always critical, even more so now. Our opponents did get a jump on us. I think all of our sleep schedules are a little screwed up still. Again (though), no one cares. We’re still playing the game at 7:10 or whatever time it is. It’s our job to make up that ground and really recover and rest the best we can,” Petras said.
One of Iowa’s primary defensive leaders elaborated on how the Hawkeyes tried to catch back up on the rest clock.
“Coach slid the times (for the team meeting) back about an hour or two on Sunday, just to give us a little bit more sleep. But, obviously it doesn’t happen in one night. It’s going to be important that we stay on top of that this whole week, being able to go to bed on time, eat and drink the right things to fuel our bodies, I feel like it all starts with that,” Campbell said.
Campbell reiterated that this week is no different than any other week. A different road to recovery or not, “the little things are going to lead to Saturday.”
While still getting back into the groove of his sleep cycle, Petras reaffirmed to fans that he should be “very well rested” for the game against Rutgers, before restating that the goal for Iowa has not changed despite a tad rockier start to the season than expected.
“We have four team goals, and the last one is to win the Big Ten West and to win the Big Ten. You can’t win the Big Ten West without winning Big Ten games. Every game’s critical, every game’s important, but our end goal is to win the Big Ten and this is when we really start playing for that,” Petras said.
Iowa opens up their Big Ten Conference play at SHI Stadium in Piscataway, N.J., against the 3-0 Rutgers Scarlet Knights.
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