Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball · Locked On Podcast Network, Trent Condon

ECSTASY: Iowa Hawkeyes Elite Eight Bound — Bennett Stirtz, Tate Sage DELIVER Epic Elite Eight Comeback

·31 min·2 clips

Tate Sage hits four threes, and Iowa goes into halftime down only three after trailing 16-6.

The episode starts with the obvious part: Iowa is going to the Elite Eight. From there, the hosts settle into the back-and-forth tension of the comeback, tracing how Nebraska kept stretching the margin and how Iowa kept dragging it back with timely threes, stops, and one stubborn possession after another. The opening also includes the show's usual network and membership read. After that, the basketball takes over. Isaiah Howard's three from the top of the key gets treated like one of those quiet plays that suddenly matters a lot because it stops a run and resets the tone. Late in the first half, Alvaro Fulgaris scores, Iowa gets a defensive stop, Nebraska answers with another stretch, and then Bennett Stirtz finds Tate Sage on the wing for a three that brings the building back to life. That sequence matters. The hosts note that Nebraska was playing well enough to make the three-point halftime deficit feel fortunate for Iowa, especially with the Hawkeyes shooting 7-for-11 from deep in the first half and 60 percent overall. Tate Sage's first-half shooting gets extra attention. He hits three of his four threes before the break, while Cooper Koch and Stirtz also chip in from long range. The conversation keeps circling back to the idea that Iowa did not dominate so much as hang around, survive, and then take the right moments. That is the whole point of the recap. The hosts also keep the bracket framing alive, treating the Elite Eight not as a generic milestone but as a specific payoff to a game Iowa could have let slip. There is a dry little bit of disbelief in the way they say it, which fits the mood better than any polished recap would. The second half gets less box-score detail than the first, but the emotional line stays clear: Iowa made the comeback by turning a close game into a string of winning plays. Bennett Stirtz and Tate Sage end up as the connective tissue. The bounce pass between them is called out as the sort of assist that feels like an homage to Dr. Tom and the older Hawkeye memory bank. By the close, the show is still riding the adrenaline of the result. It leaves you with the sense that Iowa's recent overtime-heavy losses made the final stretch look manageable once the game got tight. Fans who want the full pulse of the win will get a lot out of it.

As heard by us

A comeback recap that keeps the focus on Iowa's runs, shots, and the swing moments that shaped the game.

Elite Eight talk carries the episode, but the real value is in how it keeps returning to Iowa's response to Nebraska's runs. The recap lands on the swing points: Isaiah Howard's three from the top of the key, then the late first-half stretch that brought Iowa back within three…

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Why you'd press play

Press play for the Hawkeye rush after Iowa clinched the Elite Eight.

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