TEMPE, Ariz. ? Standing near the 20-yard line in the closing minutes of the Insight Bowl, Iowa receiver Marvin McNutt Jr. looked to the sky and couldn't believe his eyes.
"First, I looked: What is it that fell from the sky?'" McNutt said.
It was a camera and, luckily, McNutt was able to avoid it.
His team wasn't quite as elusive.
Unable to generate much offense until the final quarter, Iowa had its rally fall short and narrowly avoided a real disaster when the camera fell from an overhead wire in a 31-14 loss to No. 19 Oklahoma in the Insight Bowl on Friday night.
"We had a couple of hiccups out there," Iowa defensive tackle Mike Daniels said. "The results show when you have hiccups against a team like that."
Thankfully for the Hawkeyes and particularly McNutt, it wasn't worse.
After falling into a 21-0 hole, Iowa (7-6) rallied behind two touchdown passes from James Vandenberg in the fourth quarter. Trailing by 10 after Oklahoma kicker Mike Hunnicutt's 35-yard field goal, the Hawkeyes had the ball around their 20-yard line when an overhead camera used by ESPN broke free with 2:22 left.
The camera came hurtling to the turf and McNutt, after looking up, jumped out of the way. He became tangled in the wire after the camera thudded down, but suffered only a scratch on his arm.
"The camera kind of scratched me a little bit," McNutt said. "It was just pulling me and I knew I didn't want to keep going with it."
Oklahoma escaped the camera and with a gritty win.
The Sooners (10-3) didn't get a particularly great game from quarterback Landry Jones and wasn't effective on the ground, either. Once considered national-title contenders, Oklahoma held off the gritty Hawkeyes, capping a painful year that started with the death of linebacker Austin Box in the offseason.
Jones threw for 161 yards with a touchdown and an interception, and Bell put the game away with a 21-yard touchdown run with 45 seconds left.
"We did exactly what we wanted to: end this with a win," Oklahoma running back Brennan Clay said.
Oklahoma's return trip to the desert wasn't expected, at least not this early in the bowl season.
Coming off a rout of Connecticut in last year's Fiesta Bowl, the Sooners were ranked No. 1 in the preseason, with hopes of a second national title under Stoops.
Those aspirations were gone after a string of injuries ? All-America receiver Ryan Broyles' torn ACL was the big one ? and two losses in the final three games, including a 44-10 rout by Bedlam rival Oklahoma State in the regular-season finale.
The frustrating run knocked Oklahoma out of not only the national championship chase, but out of a BCS bowl and into the Insight Bowl.
Instead of making a statement in the desert, the Sooners seemed to stand still in the first half. Oklahoma had just 89 yards on 27 plays in the half, but led 14-0 thanks a pair of 4-yard runs by Bell ? one set up by an interception and another on the Sooners' only sustained drive.
The Sooners finally started to click, a least for a little while, in the second half.
Oklahoma drove inside Iowa's 10 on its opening drive, though that ended with an acrobatic tip-and-catch interception by Iowa defensive lineman Broderick Binns.
The Sooners didn't slow down, marching on their next drive for a 3-yard, play-action touchdown pass from Jones to Trent Ratterree ? breaking a streak of eight straight TDs by Bell ? to go up 21-0.
The Hawkeyes finally fought back.
Iowa overcame the suspension of its top running back and a favored opponent to win last year's Insight Bowl, beating Missouri 27-24. The Hawkeyes did it behind Marcus Coker, who ran for 219 yards and two touchdowns after replacing suspended starter Adam Robinson.
This time it was Coker who had to watch. The sophomore, who ran for 1,384 yards and 15 touchdowns during the regular season, was suspended for violating the university's student-athlete code of conduct.
Without Coker, Iowa would have to rely on a group of unproven running backs ? none had more than 18 carries ? and lean even more on Vandenberg.
No one was particularly effective in the first half.
Vanderberg was off-target early and had a pass intercepted by Jamell Fleming at Iowa's 31 in the first quarter, then exacerbated the miscue by being called for a late-hit penalty. Bell scored his first touchdown two plays later.
Iowa had just one sustained drive in the first half, but that petered out; the Hawkeyes lost 3 yards on fourth-and-1 from the Oklahoma 6.
Their running game ineffective, the Hawkeyes bumbled around most of the next two quarters before finally moving the ball again late in the third quarter. Vandenberg completed seven of his eight passes on a 75-yard drive, the final an across-his-body throw for a 5-yard touchdown pass to C.J. Fiedorowicz that cut Oklahoma's lead to 21-7.
Vandenberg then got the Hawkeyes within seven with 7 minutes left, hitting Keenan Davis to convert on a fourth-and-10 to set up a 9-yard touchdown pass to Jordan Canzeri on a screen.
That was it, though.
Hunnicutt followed with a 35-yard field goal with just over 4 minutes left and Bell added his final scoring run after the falling camera nearly took out McNutt, ending Iowa's school-record bowl winning streak at three.
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