IOWA CITY - James Vandenberg got what likely was his last little sniff of anonymity last Saturday night.

Iowa's redshirt freshman quarterback was in the Bass Pro Shop in Altoona, Iowa, trying on some waders he hopes to use in his next duck hunting foray with teammate Brandon Wegher. A store clerk, not knowing who he was, asked him if he had gone to the Iowa-Northwestern game earlier that day.

Vandenberg nodded.

"Did it look as rough in person as it did on TV?" the clerk asked.

Vandenberg just smiled.

"You have no idea," he said.

The kid from Keokuk, Iowa, got his first real taste of college football in that game, and it was a bit rough. He completed nine of 27 passes for 82 yards after replacing injured Ricky Stanzi and the Hawkeyes went down to their first loss of the season, 17-10.

Vandenberg will make the first start of his college career this Saturday in about the most daunting circumstances imaginable. The BCS' 10th-ranked team takes on No. 11 Ohio State and one of the nation's elite defenses in front of 102,000 unruly fans and a national TV audience with a berth in the Rose Bowl hanging in the balance.

"What more could I ask for?" Vandenberg said. "I'll never be in this situation again. I plan to make the most of it."

Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz understands how much pressure Vandenberg will be under, and he said the kid understands, too.

"He's walking into a tough, excellent defense," Ferentz said. "It might as well be an NFL defense we're playing. It's going to be a tough order there. The crowd noise is going to be hard ... You couldn't ask for a tougher starting contest for him."

Staying calm

If the situation has Vandenberg flustered or nervous, it doesn't show.

He seems unusually sure of himself for a kid who won't turn 20 until a week from Monday - he waders were an early birthday present. He's calm, confident, bordering on brash.

Teammates say that despite his inexperience, they have no qualms about his toughness or feistiness.

"I've beat the heck out of him a few times, and he just keeps fighting ..." senior linebacker Pat Angerer said. "Every time he comes over to my house he's running his mouth. I've literally choked him unconscious a few times and he always gets up talking trash."

Angerer refers to Vandenberg as "the little brother I've never had," but Vandenberg said big brother might be exaggerating just a little. He said he, safety Tyler Sash and others have spent a lot of time at Angerer's house, and there have been several impromptu wrestling matches. And Angerer almost always wins.

"But I don't think he's ever had me unconscious," Vandenberg said. "I may have been close a couple times."

Born to play quarterback

Vandenberg grew up in Keokuk, the son of an emergency room doctor at Great River Medical Center.

He is an avid hunter and fisherman, and it was a venture into the great outdoors that first convinced Dr. Toby Vandenberg that his oldest son was destined to an athletic achiever. They were rabbit hunting when James, then only 3 or 4, spotted a rabbit about 20 yards away.

"I gave James a rock and told him to see if he could hit the rabbit," Toby Vandenberg told the Burlington Hawk Eye a few years ago. "He hit the rabbit right in the head and killed it. I knew right then and there he had some magic in his arm."

Toby, who played a little quarterback at Missouri Southern, and his father, Jim, who played at Southern Arkansas and was the coach at Keokuk High School for 17 years, spent many years relentlessly tutoring James on the finer points of playing quarterback. There were many sessions throwing the ball around the yard and James attended innumerable summer camps.

It all paid off at the high school level. Keokuk was hardly a statewide football power - it has only five playoff appearances in its history - but Vandenberg led the Chiefs to the Class 3A state title in 2007, including a rout of Wegher's Sioux City Heelan team in the championship game.

Along the way, he had arguably the most prolific season ever by an Iowa high school passer. His totals of 3,729 yards and 49 touchdowns are state records.

Wait-and-see approach

Despite that success, a scholarship offer from the home-state university took some time to materialize. There is evidence to suggest that Vandenberg was not Iowa's first choice among quarterback prospects that year.

Ferentz said he and his staff offered a scholarship to Tuscola, Ill., QB John Wienke before his senior year, but as with Stanzi two years earlier, they waited to see what Vandenberg did in his senior season.

Vandenberg had an offers from Northern Illinois and Nebraska, and Michigan State also showed some interest. Finally, in early December, the Hawkeyes told Vandenberg they had a scholarship for him.

"To me, it was always going to be Iowa," he said. "If they offered me, I wasn't going to be able to turn it down."

Wienke had committed to Michigan, but he became disenchanted with a coaching change there, and he also ended up signing with Iowa.

The two players became fast friends and rivals. They both redshirted last season and were listed on the same line on the depth chart behind Stanzi until last Saturday.

"They both throw the ball well. They're both students of the game," Ferentz said. "The big thing they lack is experience, and right now James has a huge edge on John since he got in the game the other day. We really like everything about him."

Growing into the job

Ferentz said probably his only concern about Vandenberg was his size. He only carried about 170 pounds on his 6-foot-3 frame when he arrived.

"That scared me a little bit the first time I saw him ..." Ferentz said. "It was a little hard to envision him playing Division I football ... James has worked really hard physically. He's a whole different guy than he was a few years ago. The biggest issue now is getting him experience, getting him caught up to speed and bringing him along."

Vandenberg admits there was a certain amount of "shock" when he was called upon to replace Stanzi last Saturday and his jitters showed when he threw an interception on his first pass attempt.

"You can't anticipate injuries," tight end Tony Moeaki said. "I'm sure he was a little nervous out there. Going into this week, he knows he's going to be out there, and his approach is going to be a little different."

Ohio State coach Jim Tressel saw enough of Vandenberg on tape to think Iowa's offensive approach won't change at all.

"As the youngster went in there in the back half of last week's game, it didn't look like they changed what they did," Tressel said. "They threw it up there a bunch of times, and he looked like he knew what he was doing."

Vandenberg admits that facing a hostile, six-figure crowd will be a new experience.

He probably did not play in front of 102,000 people in all the games in his high school career combined. He said the most pressure he ever felt was in a first-round playoff game with Marion in 2007.

"There was a lot of nerves and there were a lot of people at that game," he said.

"But I don't think it's comparable to this."