Fun Facts: Iowa-Illinois

The weather has turned wicked in the Midwest, Iowa's football team hit the skids at Minnesota last Saturday — let's face it, you need some fun. So here are some Fun Facts for the Iowa-Illinois game.

1. Iowa's Mark Weisman is three rushing touchdowns from tying Sedrick Shaw and Tavian Banks as the Hawkeyes' all-time leader. Shaw had 33 rushing TDs in 46 games, Banks 33 in 42 games. This will be Weisman's 33rd game.

2. Illinois quarterback Wes Lunt averages 2.8 passes for 30 or more yards, which leads the nation.

3. Last week, Andrew Stone and Akeem Wadley became the 18th and 19th different Hawkeyes to catch passes this season.

4. The Fighting Illini have allowed 335 rushing yards per game in Big Ten games. That's 107 more than any other team.

5. The Illini did hold Minnesota to 86 first-half yards in their last home game, a 28-24 home win over the Gophers.

6. Illinois' Justin DuVernois was a high school teammate of Iowa quarterback Jake Rudock at St. Thomas Aquinas in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. DuVernois is averaging 45.7 yards per punt. He is on a pace to top Steve Weatherford's school record of 45.4. Weatherford is in his 10th NFL season.

7. Illinois trailed in the fourth quarter of each of its four victories.

8. Since 2010, Illinois has had 10 players taken in the first three rounds of the NFL Draft. That leads the Big Ten. The Illini were 20-30 over those four seasons.

9. This will be Iowa's seventh-straight 11 a.m. (CT) game.

10. Illinois cornerback V'Angelo Bentley is the only Illini player to ever score on kickoff, punt, interception and fumble returns.

11. Cory Provus will be the Big Ten Network's play-by-play announcer for this game. He is the radio play-by-play announcer for the Minnesota Twins.

12. Illinois hasn't made a field goal in its five Big Ten games. Every other team in the league has at least three, and Penn State has 13.

13. The last time Iowa and Illinois played was in Champaign six years ago. Illinois won, 27-24. The Illini's quarterback was Juice Williams. He caught a 5-yard touchdown pass with seven seconds left last April to give the Chicago Slaughter a 50-45 win over the Cedar Rapids Titans in an Indoor Football League game in Hoffman Estates, Ill.

Cedar Rapids avenged the loss two weeks later, 62-28. Williams had three TD catches for the Slaughter in that game.

14. Williams is now the director of high school and alumni relations for Tim Beckman's Illinois football program.

15. The crowd for that '08 Iowa-Illinois game was 62,870. Illinois' average attendance that season was 61,707. Since:

2009:

59,544

2010:

54,188

2011

: 49,548

2012:

45,282

2013:

43,787

2014:

41,059 (so far)

16. Urbana, Ill., had 41,250 people according to the 2010 U.S. Census. Urbana, Iowa, had 1,458. So Urbana, Ill., is far more urban than Urbana, Iowa.

However, Urbana, Iowa had a 43.1 percent population growth from 2000 to 2010 compared to the 13.4 percent of Urbana, Ill.

17. This will be the third-straight Iowa game in which the home team has put something on its helmets to honor the U.S. military. The home team won the first two of those games. Illinois is doing it this week.