BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Early in the fourth quarter of Saturday's game at Indiana, No. 9 Iowa found itself leading by a mere point. In other words, the Hawkeyes had things right where they wanted them.
"We love it," senior safety Jordan Lomax said. "That's the situation we want to be in."
That's one major reason why Iowa has surged to a surprising 9-0 start. This team is embracing crunch time and making the most of it.
It started in the third week of the season, when the Hawkeyes put together a last-minute drive to set up Marshall Koehn's 57-yard field goal to beat Pittsburgh. It continued when they held off Wisconsin for a 10-6 road win in a crucial Big Ten West game. Illinois got within three points in the fourth quarter during a threat at Kinnick Stadium, but the Illini could not get any closer as Jordan Canzeri kept running for first downs to put the game away.
So Iowa knew what to do in another pressure moment on Saturday. After Indiana closed the gap to 21-20, quarterback C.J. Beathard led two straight touchdown marches, Desmond King ended a Hoosiers drive with an interception and the Hawkeyes recovered an onside kick to preserve the 35-27 win.
"That fourth quarter was a little bit representative of our football team," head coach Kirk Ferentz said. "We've been in some tough, sticky situations. But we find a way to get it done."
The strong finishes are a reversal of what happened in 2014. And, in many ways, a response to what transpired.
Iowa had a chance to win the Big Ten West Division in the final two weeks of last season when Wisconsin and Nebraska came to Iowa City. The Hawkeyes twice got within two points of the Badgers in the fourth quarter but couldn't make enough plays. The season finale against Nebraska was even more disappointing, as they blew a 17-point second-half lead to lose in overtime.
You'd better believe those outcomes influenced everything Iowa did this offseason.
"Oh yeah," receiver Matt VandeBerg said. "That bitter taste stuck in our mouths. We knew that, OK, we didn't finish, so what do we need to change in order to make this better? We all said we were going to win the fourth quarter."
Finishing became a mantra for every winter workout, every spring drill, every summer practice. That's not an unusual goal for a football team, but the players had a firsthand experience driving them toward it.
"I think it's kind of mind over matter in a lot of ways," VandeBerg said. "Thinking you can do something allows you do it."
The other thing that has changed at the end of games for Iowa is the presence of Beathard.
He's now 10-0 as a starter, but his role as a finisher may be even more impressive. Beathard saves some of his best work for the clutch, like when he scrambled and smartly called timeout in the Pitt game to set up the game-winning kick.
In the fourth quarter on Saturday, Beathard threw a touchdown pass to George Kittle even though Ferentz was desperately trying to call a timeout before the snap. The play call that had been sent in was missing a key component, but Beathard figured it out on his own and calmly executed it.
He also ran away from pressure and threw a 12-yard completion on a key third-and-11 in that fourth quarter. And with Iowa trying to bleed out the clock in the final 90 seconds, Beathard -- bad groin and all -- scooted 7 yards for a first down on a naked bootleg.
"We didn’t know he was going to boot out like that," center Austin Blythe said. "The next thing you know, we see him running and I'm like, 'You're supposed to be hurt.' But he's a tough guy, a competitor. He wants to win as much as anybody. The way he plays in pressure situations isn’t really a surprise to us anymore."
If there's such thing as a clutch gene, Beathard must have inherited it. He also leaped over defenders for a touchdown in the waning seconds of the first half on Saturday, ignoring his own physical limitations.
"His poise and his toughness out on the field are extremely impressive," Ferentz said.
And when it comes to closing out games these days, the same can be said for the Hawkeyes as a whole.