Home / Sports

IOWA CITY – The cheers were louder than usual for Trey Stross on Saturday.

In addition to being one of the 17 seniors honored at Kinnick Stadium, Stross needed a pick-me up following his tumultuous week.

After dropping three passes the previous week at Ohio State, including a touchdown in the opening half, Stross received several negative posts on his Facebook page.

In fact, Stross felt the need to apologize to fans on Facebook for his performance.

In his post, the Ohio native labeled it “the worst game of his career and it’s a shame that it was against Ohio State.

“I tried my best and it just didn’t come to me.”

Despite his case of the drops, in a game where the winner earned a trip to the Rose Bowl, Stross didn’t owe the fans an apology. Stross should be remembered for more than one bad game in his five-year career.

During his time in black and gold, Stross has been steady.

He’s the team’s third-leading receiver with 30 catches this season for 405 yards. And even fighting a pair of hamstring injuries, he’s caught more than 70 passes for nearly 1,000 yards in his career.

“He doesn’t need to apologize to anybody,” offensive lineman Bryan Bulaga said. “He’s worked hard and played in a lot of big games and made a lot of big plays for this football team.”

Stross has more than 4,200 “friends” on Facebook, and most of them are Iowa football followers.

The majority of them were supportive after the Buckeye debacle, while “a couple” were ruthless.

So when Stross was introduced Saturday, he was welcomed to a boisterous applause by the Iowa faithful.

“I wasn’t expecting them to be negative, but I didn’t know if there would be crickets chirping,” he said. “I was definitely appreciative of the support.”

Stross, who started all 12 games this season, hauled in three receptions for 26 yards. Afterward, he was overwhelmed by the support.

“These fans are great,” he said. “I’ll admit that I was feeling really bad last week. I know other guys didn’t play well at Ohio State, but I felt terrible.

“When you feel like you let down your family, it hurts a lot.”

The friendly riveting between Iowa linebackers Pat Angerer and A.J. Edds continued Saturday.

Earlier in the week, head coach Kirk Ferentz said the two seniors are “opposites in almost every regard.”

“(Edds) is probably going after (Iowa athletics director) Gary Barta’s job as soon as he gets out of football,” Ferentz said, “or maybe he’ll be a president of a bank or something like that.

“Pat might be after someone else’s job in WWA or whatever they call that stuff.”

Ferentz might have been referring to Mixed Martial Arts or World Wrestling Entertaining. Regardless, the two probably won’t be in the same line of work.

“We’re pretty different,” Angerer said. “I’m a lot better looking; he’s ugly. I’m athletic; he’s unathletic. I’m stronger; he’s not that strong. Those are the biggest things.”

Later, Angerer critiqued Edds’ hairstyle.

“You should see him when he gels it back,” Angerer said. “I don’t know what he’s doing. I think his biggest challenge is he’s so ugly. And he’s managed to get a girlfriend in college. That’s impressive.”

Edds got in a dig after Saturday’s 12-0 victory over Minnesota.

All week, defensive coordinator Norm Parker emphasized to his defense that if Minnesota didn’t score, then Iowa would probably win the game.

“That was good insight, pretty simple,” Edds said. “That makes it easy for us, especially for guys like Pat.”