IOWA CITY, Iowa – The Iowa football team defeated Wisconsin 30-0 on Saturday at Kinnick Stadium. Iowa has now won five games in a row against the Badgers and improved to 6-2 overall and 3-2 in conference play.

Here is Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz’s entire post-game press conference transcript:

COACH KIRK FERENTZ: Clearly a lot of good things today. First and foremost, really proud of our team. The way they responded to a tough week last week. They did a great job there, and I think you just watch the game, it was truly a team win in all three phases. Staff did a great job of giving our guys a good plan, but most importantly, the players are the ones doing it and really played well out there.

We had a good week of practice, good focus, and today most importantly, good execution, and played a lot cleaner than a week ago. What we said last week, we’re not going to win doing what we did. So, big improvement there, and I’m happy about that, certainly.

Tomorrow we’ll go back in just like every Sunday, win or lose. There’s going to be things that we got to get better at, and we’ll see on film. You have to look at the tape and there’s always answers there. So, that’ll be there.

I encouraged our guys to enjoy it today. Be smart about what they’re doing. The window’s getting pretty tight here in terms of how many weeks we have left, but just enjoy this one. We’ll look at the tape tomorrow and then move forward.

Probably the biggest thing for us right now is it’s always been this way in the NFL — I think it’s more true now — it’s week-to-week. You have examples every week, and the better we can understand that, the better we’ll be. We’ll keep pushing on that one a little bit as we head into November. November football has always been important in our program and will continue to be so. We’ll talk about that a little bit as we move forward as well.

Great to get the Heartland Trophy back. And great to get the toolbox in our house, too. We all kind of joke about it, but I can’t say enough about the job our managers do. I’ve coached at the University of Maine where we had one person doing the job of all what our guys do, and it’s a big difference. They’re fantastic young guys, too; they know the value of work. They know what it means to show up and work late and all that stuff.

One of them was here actually—Chris VandeWeerd—was a manager a while ago, and now he’s actually flying Marine One, the helicopter that the President flies in. It’s kind of emblematic of these guys. If you had a job opening, that’s who you want to hire, because these guys really know what they’re doing, and I think Chris might have inspired them on the toolbox. Just appreciate everyone doing a great job.

Lastly, it is great to be back in Kinnick. It feels like it’s been two months since we’ve been here, and our fans couldn’t have been better. Just appreciate them helping us out a little bit.

Q. Over the years, I’ve covered a lot of your games, and when you guys have had kind of those clunkers, your teams always seem to respond with one of their best efforts of the year. How or why does that happen?

KIRK FERENTZ: It gets down to the players. It really does. Let me be more specific about the clunkers: there’s different kinds of clunkers, and the ones that really bother me—I mean, really bother me—is when we maybe don’t show up with the proper respect for what it takes to be successful. Those are harder to really live with. Last week wasn’t that. I think our effort was great. We have a great group of young guys. They’ve handled themselves really well day-to-day.

It’s a learning process. Every time you’re out there, it’s a learning process, and this is a younger team compared to last season. So, I think just maybe having an appreciation—they appreciate the fact that it’s going to be hard and competitive, but maybe we just didn’t have the proper focus and attention to detail on the little things that you have to do. That’s nobody’s fault; it’s just one of those things that happens. So, I think we did a little better there, and people asked about the ball security stuff last week. That was the most apparent thing.

There’s really no drill for that. It’s just a matter of going out and doing things. We haven’t played great coming out of halftime, either. Basically, we talked about doing jumping jacks or something different just to shake up the routine, but we do the same damn thing before the game. We come off the field, we sit there for 23 minutes, and we’ve been fine in the first half. It’s just a matter of really focusing in, understanding this is going to be the challenge, and then doing it.

Q. This is a series where, for the last 35-plus years, the schools have measured themselves against one another. It just kind of depends on who’s a little bit better in one era or the next. But now you’ve won five straight against Wisconsin, and the last three have been in pretty good fashion for you. How meaningful is that for you just over the course of your career? Because a lot of years it’s been such a grind, and now you’re able to put your stamp on a series right now.

KIRK FERENTZ: We have the utmost respect for Wisconsin, especially coming in here. They went through some things the last couple of years and maybe weren’t as good a couple years ago, but from my vantage point, they’re doing a great job there. They’re doing things like you’d expect them to do and doing them really well, and they got a good group of players, and they’ll get back on their feet, too.

My point of reference goes back: when I got here, we were looking up at everybody, and Wisconsin was at the top of the heap. It took us four years to finally at least have a win against them, but none of them have been easy since that time. So, that’s kind of been the way it is.

Q. Jayden Montgomery had a couple big plays: a fourth-down stop and a fumble recovery. What’s it mean to see him have a big day in a rivalry game as a fifth-year guy?

KIRK FERENTZ: His high school coach was actually here this weekend and came to practice yesterday, and we were talking. As his high school coach actually said, “I was not confident that he would”—not that he wasn’t confident, but he wasn’t sure if Jaden would be able to start for us. Quite frankly, when we recruited Jayden, the motivating thing there is he had like a 4.4 grade point average, outstanding student out of a 4.0 scale.

Great attitude, high motor, all the things you see, and I figured the worst it could be is being a special teams contributor and thought he’d help our team’s attitude, temperament, and all that stuff. I don’t know how you go wrong in that, and we know the family pretty well, too. When he went in last year, our level of play went up, and I think that’s a great reminder for all of us about evaluating people and sometimes you got to let a person have a chance and see what they do. When he got his chance, he just took it and ran with that.

The thing that impressed me was before that, when our older guys—the Hawkeye captains—we expanded our leadership group and they’re all talking about him when he was a non-starter at that point. I’m thinking, “How does a young guy like that have all these guys talking so positively?” Now I know the answer. He’s a great leader, a great young guy, and just like I talked about with the managers and what they do, I don’t know if Jayden’s going to play in the NFL, but he’s a hell of a college football player and I’m glad he’s on our team.

Q. Wisconsin’s defense is really aggressive; they showed that last week against USC. It really comes down to decision-making a lot of the time for the quarterback. For the ups and downs that Hank Brown’s been through, to be able to insert him in there, what can you say about his decision-making and just the way he came out strong and the receivers were getting open, and just kind of elevate the passing game again against a really good defense?

KIRK FERENTZ: I thought he played a good game. I just told Gary Dolphin, I don’t like that term when they call someone a “game manager”. It usually means you think the guy stinks and he just lets everyone else win the game for him. But you have to have control out there, and that’s a hard position because there’s so many things he has to be thinking about.

It’s easy to say that, but to be in control is a tough thing to do, and I think he clearly was today. I want to make the point again: we like both quarterbacks. Jeremy’s a good player and a good quarterback, and Hank is, too. No matter who’s in there, it’s going to have some ups and downs because they’re inexperienced, younger guys.

My personal feeling is that no matter who’s in there, they’re going to get better if we just are smart about it. I’ll throw Evan James in there, too; I really thought he did a great job today. That gives us more opportunities, but it’s pretty important when he’s around that ball—those are critical situations. My comfort level with him felt a lot better today than it did last week, and that’s seven days of building some positive deposits.

Q. I know that the overarching theme here is confidence building in a win like this, but with how young this core is, how much confidence does a win like this after losing last week, after losing to Ohio State and the Washington game, how much does that just kind of reinstill confidence in a young group like this?

KIRK FERENTZ: I can stop for one second. I had an amusing moment yesterday. Somebody who I respect a lot and really like brought up, “So, you know, you guys are kind of in a little slide here, two out of three.” I was like, “I hadn’t thought of it that way. That was eight months ago when we played Ohio State. I was like, “That’s what ruined my day. Thank you.” And it’s a person I like a lot, too.

That’s how you learn: sometimes you have to stub your toe, and the key thing is do you learn? They did. Apparently they did. Now, what are they going to learn this week? We’ll find out. But you respond or you don’t, and the guys really responded today.

Q. It seemed like you guys were pretty creative in getting the ball to Jayden Montgomery—he had a couple of carries—and Tony Diaz as well. What were the communications or message from Tim in preparation leading up to the game of maybe just trying to be more creative in getting those guys the ball?

KIRK FERENTZ: If you watch us at all, those three guys are guys that can do something with it. We don’t have Kamari in there right now, so it’s a committee.

You want to try to find ways to get the ball in those guys’ hands and have them help you do something, hopefully give you a spark play out there. I think another big factor today—and it all kind of goes hand in hand—is we stayed in pretty good shape. Our third-down stuff was good, but we had more manageable third downs, and staying ahead of the chains and being able to play the way you want to play helps an awful lot.

Some of that circles back to Hank’s play. People traditionally try to take the run game away from us, and if you can’t hurt them in the pass, then you’re going to have a problem, probably. So I think that was a helpful thing today, too, and certainly those guys are going to be involved in that.

Q. Xavier Williams seemed like he had a pretty productive day, but then he’s also got the fumble still. I guess how do you manage that, especially with Kamari Moulton out and kind of lacking some of that depth?

KIRK FERENTZ: Same as last week. I don’t want to say it couldn’t have been worse, but it was pretty close—the worst one I remember. Everybody’s got ownership in that, and it’s usually just a little bit more concentration.

One thing I’ll point out about the first loose ball that came out, you guys noticed who got the ball? Addison. That isn’t a typical Addison play. If you need something, he’s going to do it. The Michigan game was the same way. So, big part there, and the last one it is what it is, but he’ll learn from this. He’ll learn from it and just understand you have to use a little bit more technique and all that’s involved there and be a little bit more focused on that. But he’s a high-quality guy who works hard, and we got total faith he’ll be better.

Q. I know you don’t look far ahead as a team, but if you lost this one, things could have gotten kind of dim for your postseason hopes. With a young group, it might be easy for a team to press, especially after the way last week went. How impressed are you with their ability to not overreact, knowing the stakes of this game?

KIRK FERENTZ: We’re not the most veteran group, but we have good leadership, and that helps. The reality is there’s not a hell of a lot you can do other than try to do what you do better. That’s usually the answer. It’s not about changing things typically, unless there’s something just obvious, but trying to get everybody to understand you got to do it better.

As I alluded to earlier, sometimes people who are a little bit less experienced lose sight of that a little easier than someone who’s been beat up a lot. If we had lost today, we’d go back to work tomorrow and try to get better this coming week. I think last year at this time we’d lost two straight for our fourth loss, and it still ended up being a great year. We finished strong, had a great bowl win, so I’m not as big on the gloom part as everyone else is. You feel that way, but then you have to move on and just say, “Hey, we still got time to play, so let’s get back to that.”

Q. Three shutouts this season. That’s pretty impressive. You and Coach Parker have your defense really, really playing well. I want to single out Cam Buffington, former eight-player high school standout. He’s having an amazing season. Comment on that if you can.

KIRK FERENTZ: First of all, the defensive staff does a great job week in and week out, and our whole staff is really good. The surprising part about that is we’re pretty young, and Cam’s a good example of that. I’m more thinking about the guys up front. These guys had, I don’t know, about eight seniors on their defensive line, our opponents. Most of their offensive linemen were juniors, but they’re older guys. We’re playing some guys up front on defense that really haven’t played much, quite frankly.

But everybody’s stepping up, starting with Bryce and Kenny doing a good job leading. Cam sometimes—you don’t know how it’s going to go on a full disclosure, I wasn’t sure how we’re going to develop on the defensive line, but we’ve been watching Cam for two years, and this is not surprising to us. It’s just he got his opening now and took off with it.

Jay Higgins wasn’t Jack Campbell, but we felt pretty good that Jay would play well. The cool thing about all this stuff—and our captain, George Kittle, talked to the team yesterday—he’s a great example. He was a really good college player, mid-round draft pick kind of like Yanda, and then went to the pros and just kept getting better.

The takeaway there is that sometimes when you evaluate people, they may not be where they’re going to be, but if they have the right attitude and we get them in the right environment, right situations, good things happen. We felt really confident that Cam would play well and he’s been awesome. He’s a great young guy, loves everything about it, so we’re just glad he’s on our team.