record-breaking 63-10 triumph<\/a>. \u201cYou will have to beat them. They\u2019re not going to beat themselves and they play really well at home.\u201d<\/p>\nNot to be outdone by his coaching colleague, Ferentz sang Indiana\u2019s praises in his press conference the same day.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere do you want to start?\u201d the 27th-year Iowa coach said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to find a weakness, it really is. They did it last year and they\u2019re doing it right now, too, with a lot of new players again. That\u2019s really impressive. That\u2019s good coaching. They clearly have a vision of what they want to be, and it looks like it\u2019s working really well for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza, who is coming off back-to-back games with five touchdown passes, Ferentz, the all-time wins leader in Big Ten history, was even more effusive:<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have a Heisman vote,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I\u2019d vote for him based on what I have seen.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s ample reason to believe both coaches are correct in their lofty appraisals of the other\u2019s program. Indiana (4-0, 1-0) comes into the game ranked No. 11, flying high following its beatdown of the Illini and the darling of many of the computer rankings, which consistently slot the Hoosiers among the top 5-7 teams in the country.<\/p>\n
Iowa, meanwhile, is coming off a solid road win at Rutgers and has been tripped up only once, a 16-13 defeat on a late field goal against rival Iowa State, which is undefeated.<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s matchup is not quite a College Football Playoff elimination game, but the loser will likely have to upset a conference heavyweight \u2013 Oregon and Penn State are on both teams\u2019 schedules \u2013 to have any hope of making the field.<\/p>\n
Both teams, too, have some history that does not appear favorable. Iowa has lost 10 games in a row against ranked opponents since its last win in October 2021. The Hoosiers have lost four in a row in Iowa City, with their last win there coming in 2007.<\/p>\n
IU\u2019s most recent meeting against the Hawkeyes, in the 2021 season-opener, came under similar circumstances: The Hoosiers were ranked for a game in Iowa City and there was significant excitement around the program. Iowa led 14-0 less than three minutes into that game and won 34-6. IU finished 2-10.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know the challenge they present,\u201d Hoosiers linebacker Aiden Fisher said of the Hawkeyes, who have won at least eight games in nine non-COVID seasons in a row. \u201cReally well coached football team, always physical, always in the right place, really disciplined, and we\u2019re the same way. So it\u2019s going to be who can break the other team\u2019s will first. It\u2019s making sure we\u2019re playing to the character of football that we know.\u201d<\/p>\n
A win would give the Hoosiers an inside track on a second CFP spot in as many years and set up a titanic road clash with undefeated, No. 6 Oregon on Oct. 11.<\/p>\n
Job No. 1 for the Hoosiers will be handling their surroundings in their first road game of the season. It is not an ideal opening test \u2013 96-year-old Kinnick is widely considered one of the most difficult road environments in the country, featuring close to 70,000 black-and-gold-clad fans at close proximity.<\/p>\n
IU struggled with tough road crowds at Ohio State and Notre Dame in its only two losses last season and has pumped in crowd noise to practice all week to try to simulate the suffocating atmosphere the Hawkeyes can bring to bear.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s loud and obnoxious and it rings your ears,\u201d Hoosiers center Pat Coogan said of the artificial noise. \u201cThere\u2019s not any breaks or anything because there\u2019s not going to be any breaks Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n
That irritation during the week is the armor the Hoosiers will take into battle with them Saturday, the lineman says.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t just turn it on Friday and expect to be good,\u201d he said. \u201cYou gotta prepare for (the noise). You gotta make sure everyone\u2019s tuned into the cadences and all the little things.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Curt Cignetti and Kirk Ferentz have known one another for more than 40 years. It\u2019s a relationship that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[107592,24319,1607,24321,399,15991,2652,13427,398,396,397,107593,99],"class_list":["post-182187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-aiden-fisher","tag-big-ten","tag-college-football","tag-curt-cignetti","tag-football","tag-hoosiers","tag-indiana","tag-iowa-hawkeyes","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-pat-coogan","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}