I’m actually hoping UCF or maybe a ASU someday adds an easier win. Last year was brutal 18 game slate with no easy wins.
Must be nice….
- Thread starter cmjh10
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I’m actually hoping UCF or maybe a ASU someday adds an easier win. Last year was brutal 18 game slate with no easy wins.
Agree. B1G West is usually bad compared to the East but this season it's historically bad. Comparing the division against the Big 12, it doesn't have an upper echelon that the Big 12 has.
I think schools like BYU, Cincy, and to a lesser extend Houston are going to look real rough when they have to play a full season in a P5 conference. Easy to look good in any sport when you are playing no one. Much harder to all of a sudden jump to one of the best if not the best basketball conference.
I wonder how long Earle Bruce will hold the record for the largest win margin over the Hawkeyes.
I remember how utterly disgruntled Hawkeye fans and Fry himself were when they couldn’t defeat Donnie Duncan with the remnants of Bruce’s program.
Then good old Jim Criner showed up to be absolutely massacred every single year by Fry. Those games were over by the 2nd quarter.
Typically Wisconsin or Iowa are better at the top than this year, and they usually NW can be counted on to be much better. That and the bottom of the East is better than usual this year.
If they decided to stick with divisions I would think the Big 10 could shift Purdue to the East and add USC and UCLA to the west. It doesn’t exactly even things out but it would sure help.
The QB play in the west is atrocious. That really helps Iowa's defense. The Big 12 has much better QBs, I think the ISU defense would get turnovers against those QBs too. We gave the ball to Iowa 5 times, and our defense was still good enough to win the game. Having 3 turnovers (two of the five were blocked punts), limited the amount of yards and opportunities for us, but despite that we still had 313 yards to their 150. Iowa was one of the games where we had some success running the ball. I think we would win the west for sure, especially if Brock and Norton are healthy all year. We would match up great with Purdue since they resemble a Big 12 offense the most. I also think our run defense is better than Iowa's, no way we would let Minnesota run for 329 yards on the ground.
I focus more on football so thinking of FB, people said this about Louisville, TCU, Utah and some others. Big ten people say this because they generally pick up horse crap teams for their conference. Rutgers, Maryland, Nebraska were all poor to washed up teams when the big ten took them. Penn state was the last team they took that had a pulse and they did fine when they joined.
UCLA is like a Nebraska now. USC may help though.
Iowa and Iowa State are incredibly similar in terms of talent level and scheme. The difference is Iowa actually acknowledges that special teams exist and know they have to be really good there to win. They do all the little things right (catching punts, sound tackling, emphasize recruiting punters/kickers) and that's the difference between Iowa winning 8 games and Iowa State winning 4.
I think Iowa would have more success in either league because they never beat themselves, we're not seeing the same at Iowa State right now.
I think Iowa would have more success in either league because they never beat themselves, we're not seeing the same at Iowa State right now.
It’ll be interesting to see Texas and OU as well. SEC always has a few elite teams but never deep all the way through like Big Ten has been.
It’s that and schedule.
Our schedule isn’t as brutal as some years, but all big ten west schedules have easy win opportunities this year especially.
After ISU beat Iowa on the road, it’s silly to think we’d get just one win against that entire division. Does anybody truly think we’d go 0-6 against the rest of that division after going 1-0 against its best team?
I’m as frustrated as anybody but come on guys. If we played like we did against Texas we’d have beaten Iowa by double digits and any other b10w team pretty easily.
No we wouldn’t. We’d be likely the third best team in the B10.
It will be tough for them in the B12. If they joined the B10, Houston would be the best program in that conference from day one.
I don’t know if ISU’s record would be better if playing the Big 10 West, but I will say the Big 10 West offenses are so one dimensional. Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois can’t throw the ball. At all. I think ISU’s d can stop them. The Big 12 at least has competent offensive play and ISU has been able to shut them down. Iowa does have a great D but if you are only facing one dimensional offenses the d better look damn good.
Chad has an interesting article in the Des Moines tag this morning that lists all of the Hok players they are losing to graduation (with those terrific degrees in creative writing). Their defense will be a dumpster fire next year along with their usual anemic offense. DeJean the Punk and Nwankpa won’t be able to carry this team.
Iowa’s defense is going to be good again next year. You’ve been calling for the downfall of anything Iowa every year and it still hasn’t happened.
