When Hawkeye fans looked at the schedule for this season and saw THE Ohio State Buckeyes (TOSU) in week 5, we all were hoping for the same thing. Please God, just let both teams win their first four games. That way we will have the mother of all battles, in primetime, on ABC, with ESPN College Gameday. Hell, does it get any bigger than that? Well, we got our wish. Enter the Buckeyes.

TOSU has looked lights out this season. One very quality win at Texas, a good win against Penn State, and two sound shellackings of Northern Illinois and Cincinnati. The Buckeye offense has looked down right frightening. The Oakland Raiders would be happy to have the Buckeye O – seriously! And the defense that everyone had been questioning before the season because they only returned 2 starters? They haven’t missed a beat either. I’m going to go about this a bit differently this week. Instead of all the numbers and stats, I want to throw out things that I think are important to the game and stuff I think Hawk fans should know.

First, I have to talk about the offense. The TOSU offense is fucking quality. You can’t put it any other way. QB Troy Smith (Sr) will probably win the Heisman pending injury. He is an amazing combination of speed, arm strength, and accuracy (he had a Heisman reel play against PSU last week – the scramble then the bomb to Robiskie). RB Antonio Pittman (Jr) is coming off of a 1,000 yard season last year and is averaging over 100 yards a game this season. The other RB, Chris Wells, is very promising as well. At wide receiver, hell, you can’t say enough about these guys. The one two punch at WR is Ted Ginn (Jr) and Anthony Gonzalez (Jr). These guys will be playing on Sunday. Ginn has Olympic speed and Gonzalez is as technically sound as you will find in a wide receiver. The offensive line has 3 guys returning, two seniors and one junior. The 2 new guys are at center and left tackle. We will see what the Hawkeye defense is made of this week.

The $64,000 question for the Hawkeyes in this game is can the Iowa defensive line put pressure on Troy Smith and disrupt the TOSU offensive rhythm. I cannot over emphasize how important this match-up is. If the Hawk D line losses that battle, Pittman and Wells win run all over us, and Smith will absolutely shred our secondary. Ginn and Gonzalez are far too good. They will get open if Smith gets time and those guys can make plays once they get the football.

The key to this game will no doubt be the lines. If Elgin and company can get the best of Patterson and Pitcock, we will have a fighting chance even if our D struggles. If they do so, I can see this game being a lot like the shootout against Michigan 3 years ago in Kinnick during the Chandler era.

For the Hawkeye offense, the key will be to come out fast. Watching this offense sputter like they have has been incredibly frustrating. I don’t know about the rest of you, but this isn’t the Hawkeye offense that was advertised and hyped up in the summer. They need to hit that top gear this Saturday if they are going to have a chance to win the game.

And one more thing; God help us if Paschal can’t play/gets hurt. Devan Moylan sustained a season ending injury against Illinois and that means if Paschal goes down, Harold Dalton is the man at FS. Come on! It’s bad enough that we will have a white guy on either Ginn or Gonzalez, now we have to throw in a sophomore at safety?

Call me a pessimist, but I don’t like the Hawks chances. There are still too many questions going into this game for Iowa and TOSU has looked too impressive in their wins thus far. My heart is with the Hawkeyes, but I just can’t see it this week. I hope I’m wrong. We are going to need some of that Kinnick mystic and aura this week.

EDIT: At Hawkize, we don’t pick against the Hawks. Sorry, Zound.IOWA 31 - O$U 21

Give us your predictions and thoughts. Convince me I’m wrong!