By: Doug Lesmerises (Cleveland Plain Dealer) — Columbus — He’s a boxer behind center.

Iowa quarterback Ricky Stanzi brings a mauler’s makeup to the football field, according to Vince Petruziello, his high school best friend and former leading receiver from Lake Catholic. So, not finishing something he started — like Iowa’s stunning season — is eating Stanzi up.

Iowa was 9-0 with a healthy Stanzi high-wiring the Hawkeyes to five fourth-quarter victories, but when he went down against Northwestern with an ankle injury last week, Iowa went down as well. After surgery, he’s out for the regular season, including Saturday’s showdown for the Big Ten title at Ohio State.

“You have to feel pretty bad for Rick. If the kid had to pick one game to play, it would be this one, going back home, especially with the way we were playing,” Iowa linebacker A.J. Edds said this week. “But he’s not going to mope. He’s going to do whatever he can to help the team play well.”

What Stanzi will have to do from the sidelines is help freshman quarterback James Vandenberg lead the Hawkeyes in “Stanziball,” which has become Iowa’s brand of winning this season. Fall behind, then find a way — that’s how Stanzi teams have always been. If Iowa is going to beat the Buckeyes, it will have to find that winning formula without him.

“With Ricky, we were never out of a game,” Lake Catholic coach Mike Bell said.

“It didn’t matter whether we were down a touchdown or two, we knew with him we always had a chance to get back in it and win the game.”

While the Hawkeyes’ rallies have been one of the defining stories of the college football season, it was just history repeating itself for those who knew Stanzi and played with him growing up in Mentor.

Whatever Stanzi’s team did to Michigan State (winning on a last-second 2-yard touchdown pass) or Indiana (rallying from a 21-7 deficit in the fourth quarter) was what had happened previously to Lake Catholic foes like Benedictine. Lake Catholic trailed by 14 against the defending state champs in the second game of Stanzi’s senior season in 2005 before Stanzi ran for one score and threw to Petruziello for two more touchdowns to clinch a 41-27 win…..

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