What Happened To The Iowa Hawkeyes?

A promising start suddenly turned into a 7-5 season with a challenging bowl game still ahead. How did that happen? What went wrong? How did a team that was supposed to improve play so much worse than last year? Here's the secret: they didn't. The Hawkeyes this year are just as good as they were last year.

	2009	2010
Ranking	22	22
Point Diff	7.6	12.7
Exp Wins	8.97	9.37
Wins	11	7
Luck	2.03	-2.37

The Hawks have actually been more dominant this season increasing their point differential by over 5. They've played a slightly easier schedule though, so their ranking by my system is exactly the same, 22nd. The only difference is that they've gone from one of the luckiest teams in football to one of the unluckiest. Just look at their record in games decided by 5 or less: in 2009 they were 4-1, but in 2010 they've been 1-4. Just as I said before the season started luck doesn't transfer between years.

Some of you might point to a final loss at Minnesota as a sign that Iowa wasn't as good this year, losing by 3 in a game they one easily last year. Yes it was a horrible loss, but it's easy to forget how close the Hawks were to those types of losses last year against UNI (a win by 1) and Arkansas State (a win by 2).

I warned at the beginning of the season not to get too high on the Hawks, and I'll say the same now: don't get too low on them. They were unlucky this year but they'll be back strong again in 2011.