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Iowa's disappointing season continues with home loss to Northwestern
Iowa’s time as the top dog in the Big Ten West was short-lived.
The Hawkeyes reeled off an undefeated regular season in 2015, but on Saturday, Kirk Ferentz’s team put together its third straight lackluster effort, this time a 38-31 home loss to Northwestern.
Saturday’s defeat comes on the heels of a loss to FCS champion North Dakota State and an underwhelming 14-7 win over the lowly Rutgers Scarlet Knights, which were demolished 58-0 by the Ohio State Buckeyes on Saturday.
On this day, Northwestern, which has losses to Western Illinois and Illinois State under its belt this season, looked like the better team from the jump. The Wildcats aren’t explosive by any means, but they had no issue moving up and down the field on a supposedly stout Iowa defense.
Northwestern notched points on three of its first four drives to jump out to a 17-7 lead before the Hawkeyes finally woke up and stormed back with back-to-back touchdown drives to take a 21-17 lead at the break.
Iowa’s lead increased to 24-17 to open the third quarter, but things swung heavily in Northwestern’s favor from there.
On its next three drives, Northwestern drove right down Iowa’s throat on touchdown drives of 75, 77 and 80 yards. Two of those drives culminated in Clayton Thorson touchdown passes to Austin Carr, his second and third scores of the game. Sandwiched between the two Carr touchdowns was a 58-yard scamper from Justin Jackson, who torched the Hawkeyes for 171 yards on 26 carries on the afternoon.
Carr’s third touchdown of the day, a 25-yard strike on first down, increased the Wildcats’ lead to 38-24 with 12:06 to play.
Iowa finally got things going again on its next drive behind the legs of LeShun Daniels and a big completion from C.J. Beathard to Jerminic Smith. On the ninth play of the drive, Daniels powered one in from a yard out to cut Northwestern’s lead to 38-31 with 8:10 to go.
Iowa seemed to have all the momentum, especially with the crowd coming alive following a Northwestern three-and-out. But when Iowa needed to put together a drive to tie things up, it couldn’t. Its first try quickly fizzled, resulting in a punt. Its second try progressed past midfield, but came to a crashing halt when Beathard was intercepted by Northwestern’s Trae Williams with just under a minute remaining.
Northwestern ran out the clock from there to improve its record to 2-3 heading into a bye week.
On the other side, Iowa dropped to 3-2 with the loss. Iowa was without top receiver Matt VandeBerg in this one, but its offense wasn’t the problem. The defense was allowing an average of 13.5 points per game through four games, so you’d think 31 points was enough to win. But this time, the Hawkeyes were outplayed in the trenches. Stellar interior play is what made the Hawkeyes so tough last year, but this team just doesn’t look the same in 2016.
With Nebraska and Wisconsin emerging in the Big Ten West, this has the looks of a mediocre season in Iowa City.
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Sam Cooper is a writer for the Yahoo Sports blogs. Have a tip? Email him or follow him on Twitter!
