The no. 19 Iowa Hawkeyes look to keep their Big Ten title hopes alive this week as they host the Maryland Terrapins. Game time is set for noon EST on Saturday, October 20, at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City, Iowa. The game can be seen on ESPN2.
According to this week’s college football odds, the Hawkeyes are 11.5-point favorites at home. However, that one has come down after Iowa opened the week favored by 13.5 points.
Iowa catapulted themselves into the top-25 after last week’s 42-16 blowout of Indiana. The Hawkeyes have won back-to-back games since their first and only loss of the season against Wisconsin a few weeks ago. They are sitting pretty at 5-1, just one win away from locking up a bowl game for the 10th time in the last 11 years.
More importantly, the Hawkeyes are one of four teams in the Big Ten West that has just one conference loss, putting them in the mix for a spot in the Big Ten Championship Game. Obviously, they’ll need a little help since they would lose a potential tiebreaker with Wisconsin. However, if Iowa keeps winning, they’ll be in a good position to earn the top spot in the West division.
Maryland is also satisfied with where they sit at the midway point in the season despite all the turmoil surrounding the program. After last week’s rout of Rutgers, the Terrapins are 4-2, including their win over Texas to open the campaign. It’s safe to say that interim coach Matt Canada has done a good job of weathering the storm and keeping his players focused on football.
Of course, being in the Big Ten East division means playing a difficult schedule, and this year, Maryland’s schedule is backloaded. The Terps will play ranked teams in four of their final six games. They only need to win two to reach a bowl game, but they would like to knock out those two wins as soon as possible. Getting a win over Iowa this week would be huge for Maryland solidifying a bowl spot.
This will be just the third all-time meeting between these two programs that are in opposite divisions inside the Big Ten. Maryland won the first meeting in 2014 while the Hawkeyes beat the Terrapins in 2015 with the home team winning both games.
It’s tough to swallow this many points because I think Maryland is a solid team. However, the Terrapins definitely have flaws and shortcomings that could get exposed in this game. With Iowa rolling the past couple of weeks and the line coming down, I’ll lean toward Iowa to score another comfortable win.
Maryland’s biggest problem is their passing game. Freshman quarterback Kasim Hill just isn’t ready to lead a team at this level. If you take away the three touchdowns he had last week against lowly Rutgers, he has just three touchdown passes on the season. There’s only been one game all season in which he’s been trusted to throw over 20 passes. Even with a limited number of throws, he’s only completing 53% of his passes. He was just 8 for 17 for 76 yards against Rutgers last week, so I think it’s safe to say he won’t produce much against Iowa.
The Terrapins have been reliant on their running game all season to carry the offense. In fairness, it’s actually working quite well. The three-headed monster of Ty Johnson, Anthony McFarland, and Tayon Fleet-Davis has been outstanding, giving opposing teams different types of runners to face. However, only being able to move the ball on the ground is not something that’s going to fly against an Iowa defense that’s yielding less than 17 points per game.
More importantly, the Hawkeyes have excelled at stopping the run all season. The likes of Iowa State, Minnesota, and Indiana have all been held under 100 yards rushing against Iowa. The Hawkeyes even managed to keep Wisconsin’s rushing attack nearly 60 yards under their season average. If they can do something similar against the Terrapins, it’s tough to envision the Maryland offense being able to score too many points.
On the other side of the field, the Iowa offense has scored over 40 points in each of the past two weeks. To be fair, the Maryland defense is sure to put up more resistance against the Hawkeyes than Minnesota and Indiana have the past two weeks. However, quarterback Nate Stanley is coming into his own. When Maryland has faced quality quarterbacks this year in games against Michigan and Temple, they’ve given up their highest point totals of the season, so I expect that Stanley will be able to lead the Hawkeyes into the end zone a few times on Saturday.
Between Iowa’s stout defense and Maryland being one-dimensional offensively, there is definitely an opportunity for the Hawkeyes to win this game going away. The Maryland defense could do enough to keep the game close. However, I’m going to bet on Stanley continuing to perform at a high level and helping Iowa score enough points to cover.