Although James Vandenberg and his teammates insisted they weren’t into moral victories or consolation prizes, there were a lot of things they could take away from Saturday’s 27-24 overtime loss to Ohio State.

They proved that the Iowa offense does not move by Ricky Stanzi alone. They showed that no one on this team is completely irreplaceable. Vandenberg served notice that the Hawkeyes have a quarterback of the future, once Stanzi is gone.

Best of all, they shut up some of those national “experts’’ who gave Iowa zero chance of even being competitive with Ohio State.

Some of the pregame commentaries were pretty outrageous. One of the “experts’’ on the 9-hour pregame show on a Columbus radio station said this was one time Ohio State could go into “Michigan mode’’ a week early because this wasn’t even going to be a contest.

(Sure, like Michigan is going to be a big test. The Wolverines are no better than the ninth best team in the Big Ten. Right now, at this point in time, they might be No. 10 or 11. I’d say Ohio State can go into Rose Bowl mode about six weeks early.)

On the ESPN Game Day show, Desmond Howard (an old Michigan man, by the way), said Ohio State would beat Iowa by at least three touchdowns. His cohort, Lee Corso, said Iowa had two chances to win – “slim and none.’’

Of course, a lot of us long ago stopped regarding Corso as any sort of expert.