#681 ASA FREE PLAY ON Western Illinois +18 over Iowa, Wednesday at 8 PM ET - We think this is a dangerous game for Iowa. School is out for Xmas break and the home atmosphere won’t be much for this game vs Western. On top of that, the Hawkeyes start right into Big 10 play next up with a home game vs Maryland and they blew out Western Illinois last year so they may overlook this game. That wouldn’t be smart. WIU is a solid team and much better than they were a year ago. They are 10-3 on the season and all of their losses have come by 6 points or less. They already beat another Big 10 team, Nebraska, on the road this year. The Leathernecks have some solid size so they will be able to compete on the boards with Iowa. In fact, WIU is a better rebounding team so far this year as Iowa struggles in that area. Western shoots the 3 very well hitting 37% from deep and the Hawkeyes are 212th nationally defending the arc. They also can score points averaging 81 PPG which will make it very tough for Iowa to pull away for a comfortable win here. They are coached by former Wisconsin assistant Rob Jeter so he knows the Hawkeyes fairly well. We like WIU to keep this game much closer than this spread.