Man, what a game today. Unfortunately the Hawkeyes did not prevail, losing 23-20 to Michigan in overtime. It looks like the blocked field goal was the difference here.
The thing that really made this loss so hard to take is the amount of penalties committed called on Iowa. Before today’s game they were flagged 20 times in 7 games. Today alone they had eleven. Some of them really hurt. There were pass interferences called on Iowa when there shouldn’t have been. To be fair, not all of the bad calls went against Iowa. How about that “fumble” that went under the instant replay review. The Michigan ball carrier was clearly in possession of the ball when it hit the ground; in fact, it could clearly be seen that the ground caused the fumble. It should have been Michigan ball, especially after the replay didn’t show “indisputable video evidence” as required by the Big Ten’s instant replay rules. If anything, the video replays should have made it even more obvious that Michigan did not fumble the ball.
Really in the end though, the reason Iowa lost, I think, was too many incomplete passes. I think QB Drew Tate looked really good through most of the game. But when you have perfectly thrown passes getting dropped by wide open receivers, that hurts. And when one of your best receivers lets a ball slip through his hands and get intercepted, that really hurts. You’ve got to hand it to Michigan though, they’ve really stepped it up against some tough teams this year, and taken more than their fair share of games down to the wire.
I just read on HawkeyeSports.com that Iowa is 0-3 when playing on ABC this year. It looks like if we want to keep winning we need to stick with being televised on ESPN+
