Iowa football faces daunting task in Big Ten championship after enjoying relatively favorable path to Indianapolis

IOWA CITY — When the 2021 Iowa football team arrived at Lucas Oil Stadium, Joe Evans was “a little star-struck.”

As a “huge Iowa fan,” the defensive end had watched the 2015 Big Ten championship game. But this time, he was the one taking the field rather than presumably taking a seat in front of a TV.

What happened after his star-struck moment two years ago — a 42-3 blowout loss to Michigan — “definitely is going to stick with us.”

“Obviously, we all remember in the facility how much we lost that game by,” Evans said.

As Iowa looks to prevent a similar outcome in this year’s Indianapolis rematch, it will face a similarly daunting Michigan team.

The Wolverines, who moved up to No. 2 in the College Football Playoff rankings, average a Big Ten-high 37.6 points per game while allowing an FBS-best 10.2 points per game.

“We’re playing against the best team we’re going to play all year,” Iowa wide receiver Nico Ragaini said. “We got to play our best football.”

Iowa is essentially going from one extreme to the other in schedule difficulty after playing eight consecutive unranked teams.

Iowa’s regular-season opponents went 68-64 (.515) this season, which is tied for 83rd among FBS teams.

Out of the 65 Power Five teams (when including Notre Dame), Iowa’s schedule is tied for 55th-hardest when looking at opposing win-loss record. Specifically in the Big Ten, the only teams to have weaker schedules were Nebraska and Wisconsin, whose opponents went 67-65 and 65-67, respectively.

Opposing win-loss record is not a perfect measure of strength of schedule, but other metrics paint a similar picture of Iowa’s schedule.

ESPN’s Football Power Index rates Iowa’s strength of schedule as 10th-best in the Big Ten and 53rd-best nationally.

Only three of Iowa’s seven Big Ten wins came against teams that are eligible for a bowl game. Iowa is one of eight Power Five teams to play fewer than two games against Associated Press-ranked teams.

Iowa did not fare well in its last game against a ranked opponent, losing 31-0 to then-No. 7 Penn State. The Hawkeyes, despite still having Cade McNamara and Erick All on the field at that point in the season, were held to 76 total yards.

Looking further back, the Hawkeyes have lost their last four games against top-10 teams and were outscored 154-27 in those games.

Iowa did have two top-10 wins early in the 2021 season — one against then-No. 9 Iowa State and the other against then-No. 4 Penn State — but both teams finished the season unranked.

The good news for Iowa is its offense has shown some improvement in the two-plus months that followed that loss at Penn State on Sept. 23.

“Our offense, I feel like, has taken a lot of steps forward since that moment,” Ragaini said.

Iowa averaged 277.3 yards per game in its four November contests versus 240.8 yards per game in September. Quarterback Deacon Hill completed 58.3 percent of his passes in November after completing only 37.8 percent of his passes in September and October.

That growth will be put to the test in Saturday’s Big Ten championship game, and there is no grading curve to boost Iowa’s score on this test.

“We’re going to have to be a lot more mentally prepared to give ourselves the best chance,” Ragaini said. “We know what it takes to beat a really good team, and we know what happens if we don’t prepare like we could.”

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com