{"id":10508,"date":"2010-11-11T19:56:32","date_gmt":"2010-11-12T00:56:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=10508"},"modified":"2010-11-11T19:56:32","modified_gmt":"2010-11-12T00:56:32","slug":"iowa-hawkeyes-vs-northwestern-wildcats-big-ten-football-picks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/iowa-hawkeyes-vs-northwestern-wildcats-big-ten-football-picks-10508\/","title":{"rendered":"Iowa Hawkeyes vs Northwestern Wildcats Big Ten Football Picks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iowa Hawkeyes at Northwestern Wildcats
\nSaturday, 11\/13\/10, 12:00 PM EDT, TV:\u00a0 ESPN
\nOpening Point Spread:\u00a0 Iowa -11
\nCurrent Betting Line:\u00a0 Iowa -9.5
\nOpening Total:\u00a0 48.5
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 49.5
\nCurrent Moneyline:\u00a0 Iowa -350 \/ Northwestern +290<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Northwestern Wildcats are getting no respect from the linesmakers despite winning four of the last five meetings with Iowa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Iowa is one of four teams with one loss in Big Ten Conference play and will be looking to avenge a lost from last year in Saturday\u2019s contest against Northwestern.\u00a0 The Hawkeyes will be traveling on the road for the second consecutive week after escaping with a 18-13 win at Indiana.\u00a0 \u201cLike every player on the field and every player on the sideline, I\u2019m sure our stomachs were in knots,\u201d coach Kirk Ferentz stated.\u00a0 \u201cIt was a little closer that I would have hoped it would be, but we won it.\u201d\u00a0 This is the 72nd game in the series and Iowa leads 46-22-3, but has dropped four of the last five meetings overall, including a 17-10 loss in Iowa City.\u00a0 The squad will be stressing the importance of holding onto the football in practice this week due to committing nine turnovers in the back-to-back defeats.\u00a0 The team is 11-3 ATS on the road this season and the college football lines page has them as a solid road favorite.<\/p>\n

The Hawkeyes still rely heavily on a defense that ranks fifth nationally in rushing defense, sixth in scoring defense and eighth in total defense.\u00a0 Iowa also comes in third in turnover margin at plus-1.3, which may prove big on Saturday afternoon.\u00a0 \u201cYou\u2019ve got two even teams,\u201d Ferentz commented.\u00a0 \u201cOne team played clean, played pretty well, and the other team didn\u2019t.\u201d\u00a0 Offensively, the unit is putting up 32.3 points and 409.8 yards per game with quarterback Ricky Stanzi leading the way.\u00a0 The senior quarterback was just named as a semifinalist for the Maxwell Award and is a big reason the squad has just six turnovers all season.<\/p>\n

Northwestern dropped its first road game in more than a year last Saturday in a 35-21 loss at Penn State, which happened to be coach Joe Paterno\u2019s 400th career victory.\u00a0 \u201cWe missed more tackles on Saturday than we\u2019ve missed in the previous five or six games combined,\u201d said head coach Pat Fitzgerald.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s not real hard, it\u2019s not real complicated.\u201d\u00a0 The Wildcats had allowed more than 30 points and 400 total yards in just one game prior to last week\u2019s failure.\u00a0 Since Fitzgerald took over the program\u2019s control in 2006, the team has posted a 9-5 record in November, with three of the wins coming against Top 25 clubs.\u00a0 Northwestern is 6-2 ATS during this month of the calendar year and 2-7 ATS thus far in 2010.<\/p>\n

The Wildcats will be honoring 12 student-athletes who will be playing at Ryan Field for the final time this Saturday, as the team will be playing against the Fighting Illini at Wrigley Field.\u00a0 The small senior class features four starters on defense and three regulars on offense.\u00a0 Quarterback Dan Persa is not in his final year in Evanston, but will play a critical part in determining the winner of this game, ranking 10th in the nation in passing efficiency and also rushing for eight touchdowns.\u00a0 He ran for a career-high 109 yards and two touchdowns in last week\u2019s loss.<\/p>\n

Bettors will find that the Hawkeyes are 5-0 ATS in their last five games as a road favorite of 3.5 to 10 points, while the Wildcats are 8-2 ATS as a home underdog.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t miss out on a huge weekend and let the college football handicappers at Maddux Sports go to work for you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iowa Hawkeyes at Northwestern Wildcats Saturday, 11\/13\/10, 12:00 PM EDT, TV:\u00a0 ESPN Opening Point Spread:\u00a0 Iowa -11 Current Betting Line:\u00a0 Iowa -9.5 Opening Total:\u00a0 48.5 Current Total:\u00a0 49.5 Current Moneyline:\u00a0 Iowa -350 \/ Northwestern +290 Iowa is one of four teams with one loss in Big Ten Conference play and will be looking to avenge […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":8368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[200,1444],"tags":[3442,3445,1281,3377,3119,3821,3378,3820],"class_list":["post-10508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-football","category-headlines","tag-big-ten-conference","tag-dan-persa","tag-iowa-hawkeyes","tag-kirk-ferentz","tag-northwestern-wildcats","tag-pat-fitzgerald","tag-ricky-stanzi","tag-ryan-field"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10508"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10509,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10508\/revisions\/10509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}