I picked a stretch of 9 years. If I omitted the 37 point game, that would truly be cherrypicking. Since the admittedly big blowout in 2008, there have been 8 games that have been fairly close to extremely close.
If you predicted an Iowa blowout each of the past 10 years, you would have been correct once, and that one correct prediction would have been 10 years ago.
I got it. There is literally nothing suggesting that this game will be a laugher for Iowa. To wit:
Nick Niemann will miss this game and Matt Hankins is doubtful as well.
This is Iowa’s first road game of the year and Minnesota’s homecoming.
Brian Ferentz’s offense has scored more than 20 points just 4 times in 13 tries against P5 defenses.
Kirk is 6-9 in games following a bye week. He is 2-8 in games following a bye week on the road. Currently, we have lost two games following bye weeks in a row.
Iowa is 2-3 in TCF Bank stadium. Two of these losses have come against Gopher teams that finished the season 3-9.
The average score of an Iowa Minny game in TCF Bank Stadium is 23-19, Minnesota.
Last year, Iowa beat 5-7 Minny at home 17-10.
Last year following our last second loss to top 5 Penn State, we scored 10 points in a loss on the road at MSU. Will we see a similar letdown post last minute loss to Wisconsin?
Finally, Iowa is 0-2 in games played on October 6th under KF (@ Purdue, 2001 and @ PSU, 2007).
I think we’re the better team, but I think this is going to be a white knuckle affair where we barely get by.
