#350 ASA PLAY ON 8* Iowa State -4.5 over Iowa, Saturday at 4:30 PM ET - Iowa is coming off what looks like a dominating performance in their 34-6 win over Indiana last Saturday. Not so fast on that assumption. The Hawkeye offense scored only 2 TD’s while the defense had two pick 6’s accounting for 14 of the 34 points. Iowa barely totaled 300 yards and were held to just 4.7 YPP. Defensively Iowa looked great but remember they were facing an Indiana QB Penix who is not even close to 100% coming off ACL surgery for the 2nd time on the same knee. He couldn’t even plant to throw and it showed with 3 interceptions and just 156 yards passing on 31 attempts (a measly 5.0 yards per attempt). ISU got a scare last week at home as they struggled to top Northern Iowa 16-10. They played a similar game out of the gate last year and lost at home to Louisiana and then turned around and beat TCU and Oklahoma the next 2 weeks. The Cyclones were obviously looking ahead to this one last week and when facing one of the very best programs in FCS (Northern Iowa) was able to keep it close in a game that was their “super bowl” so to speak against a big boy in the state. ISU is simply better at nearly every unit in this game. They have the better QB (Purdy), one of the top RB’s in the country (Hall), 5-starters back on the offensive line, and defensively they return their 20 top tacklers from last year’s 9-3 team that beat Oregon in the Fiesta Bowl. Iowa has one of the more inexperienced offensive lines in the nation (115th in starts returning), their QB Petras is inconsistent at best (under 50% completions last week for just 145 yards), he lost 2 of his top 3 WR’s, and the defense while still solid, lost almost their entire front 4. Iowa State is the much more complete team and they are at home. This is a HUGE game for the ISU program having lost 5 straight to their cross-state rivals. Iowa turned the ball over just ONCE in those 5 games combined (6 turnovers for ISU) and yet 2 of the last 3 meetings Iowa had to come from behind late in the 4th quarter to win by 1 point and by 3 points in OT. HC Matt Campbell is putting a big time emphasis on winning this game as to be expected. We like the Cyclones to win by at least a TD here.