IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) – Former Iowa football players Micah Hyde, James Ferentz and Keenan Davis have been selected to play in the East-West Shrine Game later this month. The contest, an all-star game meant to showcase outgoing seniors for NFL scouts, will be held Jan. 19 in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Hyde was named the Big Ten’s defensive back of the year in 2012 and shared team MVP honors with Ferentz.  Ferentz was a second-team All-Big Ten pick at center last season.  Davis caught 47 passes for 571 yards and a score in 2012.

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The Iowa State women won their Big 12 Conference opener, but it wasn’t easy. The Cyclones staged a second half rally and beat Texas in overtime 73-65 Wednesday night in Ames. ISU Coach Bill Fennelly was relieved, especially since it took the Cyclones six tries to notch their first conference win last season. “It’s just a great way to start the new year and a great way to start the Big 12. Only 17 more of these to go, I guess,” Fennelly said with a laugh. “The fans were phenomenal…they always are, but our team really need them tonight.” Just over 7,100 fans attended the game at Hilton Coliseum.

The Cyclones were led in scoring by a couple of seniors — Anna Prins finished with 17 points and Chelsea Poppins added 16.  “When you win in the Big 12, when you find a way to win, you need to have good guard play…but your seniors sometimes have to will your (team) to win and I thought our seniors, in the last 20 minutes and the overtime, willed our team to win,” Fennelly said. Nikki Moody recorded a double-double for the Cyclones with 14 points and 10 assists, while adding 6 rebounds.

With the win, Iowa State improved to 10-1 overall. Texas dropped to 7-5.

(Radio Iowa Sports)

The Iowa women open the Big Ten season hosting 24th ranked Ohio State in Iowa City this (Thursday) evening. Tip-Time at Carever-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City, is 5:30-p.m.   Hawkeye coach Lisa Bluder says they’ve prepared well with a tough non-conference schedule. “Ohio State comes in here ranked in the top 25. We should be ready for that. We faced numerous teams in the top 25. We’ve done well against them,I think our team is excited to start Big Ten play and get going with this season. But, of course, Ohio State, we only play them one time all year. This is it, the first game, which is strange, out of the gates, but last year we only got to play them one time and it was at their place. We are looking forward to having them on our home court again,” Bluder says.

She says Tayler Hill is the leader of the Buckeyes. ” She can score at will. She’s a three-point shooter, driver, free-throw shooter. She is I think that’s the key to their basketball team,” Bluder says. “Ashley Adams at six five has a little girth to her, can really post up. The thing that’s impressive about her is how well she passes the ball. She’s an extraordinary passer.”

The Hawkeyes host Michigan after Ohio State, making it important to get off to a good start. “We know from experience that if you want to do well in the Big Ten, you have to do well at home. If you want to finish in the top four or five teams in this conference, you have to take care of home court. So right away these two games are pretty important for us,” Bluder says.

Iowa has gotten some votes in the polls, and Bluder believes they should get enough to be ranked. “Well my opinion, we should be. The last time I looked, our RPI was 19 in the country. We don’t have any control over that. So all we have to do, all we can do, is to go after the next game, win the next game, win the next game,” Bluder says. “Sometimes people get put up into the top 25 and never come out, seems like they can do no wrong once you get anointed up there. Other teams like us, seems like we have a hard time breaking into that.”

The Buckeyes come in with a 10-3 record. Iowa is 12-3.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A person familiar with Andy Reid’s plans tells The Associated Press that the former Eagles coach is interviewing with the Kansas City Chiefs for their open job. The person spoke on condition of anonymity Wednesday because the information was not made public. ESPN.com first reported that Reid was meeting with the Chiefs.

Kansas City has also interviewed Atlanta offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter, but Falcons coach Mike Smith said Wednesday that Koetter signed a new contract and would not be a candidate for head coaching jobs this season. The Chiefs fired Romeo Crennel on Monday after going 2-14 in his first full season.

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You may’ve heard there’s a high-tech automobile simulator at the University of Iowa, but the campus is also home to a bicycle simulator. Dr. Jodie Plumert is co-director of the sophisticated virtual environment which is used to study how children make decisions in heavy traffic without being at risk. Plumert says the simulator immerses bicycle riders in a city-scape. “There’s a bicycle that sits in the middle of these three very large screens that are placed at right angles to each other so it completely wraps around the person who’s riding the bike,” Plumert says. “As you pedal the bike, you actually appear to be moving through the environment. As you turn, you appear to be turning and so on.”

She says one focus of the bicycling simulator is to compare how kids and adults cross intersections filled with virtual on-coming cars and trucks. “They bicycle up to an intersection and they see traffic that’s coming on the cross street,” Plumert says. “They just watch the traffic and then they cross when they think they can cross without getting hit by a car. They go on and do that again at the next intersection and they do that for 12 or 14 intersections.”

From the recent research, Plumert says they’re seeing a pattern in the children bicyclists, ages 10, 12 and 14. She says they choose the same gaps in traffic as the adults to cross, but they tend to hesitate before pulling out. “What happens is that they end up with less time to spare than the adults have,” Plumert says. “One thing we’ve been able to pinpoint is that kids, even at these older ages, when you put them in a fairly challenging traffic situation, are not coordinating their movements with the traffic as well as the adults are.”

There are some 600-thousand bicycle-related injuries treated in emergency rooms nationwide each year. Children ages five to 15 years old represent a particularly vulnerable segment of the cycling population. Motor vehicles are involved in about one-third of all bicycle-related brain injuries and in 90-percent of all fatalities resulting from bicycle crashes.

(Radio Iowa)

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Aaron Murray threw five touchdown passes to set a Georgia bowl record, including two in the fourth quarter, as the sixth-ranked Bulldogs beat Number 23 Nebraska 45-31 in the Capital One Bowl on Tuesday. Murray shook off a pair of first-half interceptions, including one returned for a touchdown, and passed for 427 yards — also a Bulldogs’ bowl record — against the nation’s top-ranked passing defense.

Nebraska (10-4) lost its third consecutive bowl game, and finished the two season with two straight woeful defensive performances. The Cornhuskers lost the Big Ten championship game to Wisconsin 70-31. The Cornhuskers led 24-23 at the half, but committed two of their three turnovers in the final 30 minutes in Orlando, Florida.