On the eve of the battle for the CyHawk Trophy I am sitting very optimistic. Not as much optimism about how great Iowa is, but about how great the difference is between the two teams. Even though Iowa hasn't looked great overall, I think they will walk away with this one fairly easily. This game is different than in years passed. It's different because the Cyclones have actually one a couple in a row. It's different because the expectations for Iowa are low. The biggest difference though, is over half the players on the two deep have 0 or 1 victory over the Clones. They don't have the experience of beating down Iowa State to allow them to overlook this game. For them, this is a B12 opponent, not the bad in state charity game. As crazy as it may sound, for college aged kids, the history of this series is that of a competitive rivalry. Wow, the rest of us must be old.
For the game, Iowa is going to continue to rack up rushing yards. Mark Weisman will top 100 yards again and the team will combine for over 225 yards rushing. We will see a little more of LeShun Daniels in this game. Also, I think this will be the game where Shumpert gets moved down a peg. We will see a combination of Tevaun Smith and Damond Powell taking over the opposite side of KMM. Jake Rudock will put up 250 yards passing as the game goes up tempo from both sides. No one will top 100 yards receiving but we will see catches from at least 10 different receivers.
The defense will give up very little as the young defensive backs put down an impressive performance and the DLine records a couple sacks. Yes, I'm predicting not just the first one, but also the second one from the DLine.
Iowa goes into Ames and covers the spread with a 31-13 victory. Go Hawks!
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