It’s remarkable how quickly things can change in college football. Nowhere has that been more evident than with Iowa’s opponent last week. The Penn State Nittany Lions started the year ranked inside the top-5 with a Heisman hopeful at QB. Now they find themselves below .500, winless in the Big Ten and without either their QB or their head coach.
For Iowa, things have certainly changed as this season has progressed, but like with coach Ferentz, perhaps the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Prior to the beginning of the season, the community here at BHGP, as well as the staff, had a resounding consensus in terms of expectations for this season. While the folks at FanDuel set the over/under at 7.5 total wins, we were collectively looking for Iowa to finish the year 9-3.
Since then, a lot has certainly changed. Not many in the fanbase had Iowa getting to 9-3 with losses to both Iowa State and Indiana. When the Hawkeyes dropped those games, the season-long expectations almost certainly had to be lowered.
But not drastically.
With the win a week ago, the Hawkeyes moved to 5-2 overall and 3-1 in the Big Ten. More importantly, they moved largely back on track to those preseason expectations.
This week, we asked for an updated view on the season-long expectations for this team from our community. Fans are largely feeling optimistic with nearly 60% of respondents calling for Iowa to 9 or more games on the season still.
Recall from our preseason polling, the fanbase was largely calling for wins against Iowa State and Indiana with the three losses coming to Penn State, Oregon and USC. With 58% of respondents still taking the over on 8.5 wins, the implication is that subset of the fanbase now feels the Hawkeyes will pick off either Oregon or USC.
Perhaps equally surprising is the lack of change in expectations for Iowa’s matchup with the Minnesota Gophers this week.
In the annual battle for Floyd of Rosedale, the Hawkeyes are favored by 8.5 points according to FanDuel Sportsbook. When we asked the fanbase before the season to pick the wins and losses for the full year, 95% picked this one as a win. Now that we’re here and we’ve seen the season play out as it has, we’re at nearly an identical number calling for a win this week: 96%.
That’s in line with our staff expectations. In our weekly Pants Predicts, all of the staff is on Iowa to win outright with an even split taking the hefty spread.
Should the Hawkeyes do as expected and emerge victorious, keeping Floyd in Iowa City, they’ll enter the bye week with their eyes on perhaps the most difficult back-to-back stretch. Post-bye, Iowa plays host to #6 Oregon before traveling out west to USC.
For the Hawkeyes to truly get back on track for 9 or more wins, they’ll need to split those games at a minimum. Should they manage to win them both, a new set of expectations may emerge for the home stretch in Iowa City.
