A Whole New Season

The Iowa Hawkeyes have hit a couple bumps in the road this year, the early season loss on the road to Arizona and last week's devastating one point loss to Wisconsin. After the Arizona loss my justification was that a non conference loss was going to have a minimal impact on the actual outcome of the season. Last week's loss was a bit tougher to handle, especially the way the Badgers have been playing as of late, the head to head loss would have been, and still could be, a difficult tie breaker for the Hawkeyes to overcome. Even more difficult was the prospect of a Michigan State team on a roll coming into Iowa City the week after an emotional loss.

Then the game was played. The Hawkeyes buckled down and used a balance of precise offense and overpowering defense to dominate the formerly undefeated Spartans to the tune of a 37-6 victory. Ricky Stanzi was extremely efficient throwing the ball only 15 times, completing 11 of them for 190 yards and 3 touchdowns. After setting the tone on the opening drive, 80 yards in over 6 minutes, the Hawkeyes scored points on all 3 of their other first half drives which gave them a 30-0 lead at halftime. The other touchdown came on a nifty play on the defensive side of the ball. Tyler Sash intercepted Cousins on Michigan State's second drive of the game, tossed the ball to Micha Hyde who scampered 60 yards to put the Hawkeyes up 17 in the first quarter. The defensive pace didn't change the rest of the day. There were three interceptions for the Hawkeyes secondary, one sack and they allowed only one rushing first down the entire game.

This win was crucial for the Hawkeyes, the top of the Big-10 is now all jammed up with MSU, Wisconsin, Ohio State, and Iowa all sitting with one conference loss. The Buckeyes come to Iowa City in 3 weeks, which appears to be their only real test left. Ohio State has a bye this week, Penn State the week after and Michigan to close out the season. The Michigan game is a rivalry game but shouldn't be much of a problem since Michigan has struggled since their fast start. The Badgers and Spartans are done with their games against ranked opponents for the year, their game at Michigan is the biggest remaining one for the Badgers and the Spartans travel to Happy Valley for their season finale.

I thought about looking up tie breaker rules and figuring out what needs to happen for the Hawkeyes to win the Big-10 title and head to California in January for the Rose Bowl. As soon as I began to look for them I realized that there was only one thing that really mattered; winning. The Hawkeyes need to win their last 4 games, including the contest at home against Ohio State. This is the only thing that they can control, each week we have seen teams get knocked off in games that some would say shouldn't be close, this of course is why we play the games and don't just look at the sheets to decide who wins. Maybe Wisconsin overlooks an opponent and picks up a second Big-10 loss, maybe MSU comes out flat following last week's loss, the point is that anything could happen. The four team jam is guaranteed to be reduced to three by the virtue of the Ohio State @ Iowa game but that is the only sure thing. The season is still up for grabs for these four teams, the question is who will work to earn it.