New Goals For Hawkeyes In The Final Weeks

Iowa's division hopes have faded, but the players say there is still work to be done.

It’s not about ruining Minnesota’s undefeated season, Nate Stanley said.

No, the Iowa quarterback said, it’s about what the Hawkeyes can still do for the rest of the season.

“The mindset has kind of shifted, to focus on a new goal,” Stanley said Tuesday. “We have an opportunity to win 10 games, and that’s something not a lot of teams do.

“The motivation for us is to get where we can play our best football.”

The Hawkeyes (6-3 overall, 3-3 Big Ten) would need to win out — three regular-season games, plus a bowl game — to get to 10 wins. Doing that would mean winning Saturday’s 3 p.m. game against No. 7 Minnesota at Kinnick Stadium.

The Gophers (9-0, 6-0) are in control of the Big Ten West Division race, and the Hawkeyes’ hopes of winning the division to get to the Big Ten championship game are quite slim after Saturday’s 24-22 loss at Wisconsin.

So the goals have shifted.

“There’s still opportunity out there, still really good opponents that we have late in the season,” running back Mekhi Sargent said. “So it’s about finishing strong. That’s it — finishing strong.”

“We still have these next three games ahead of us, and then the bowl game,” linebacker Djimon Colbert said. “We’re still trying to play for a good bowl game at the end. We still have goals we have to reach, we still have a picture of what we want the season to look like.”

The picture for coach Kirk Ferentz is a little different.

“As I said the other day, I'm not real global with my thinking at this point,” he said. “I’m thinking about our next game, and that's really the only one that counts. We have every opportunity to have a really good season this year. I do know this, though, it’s going to be better if we win this week and then the next week and then the next week, and the only week I can worry about is this one.

“You just have to have that mentality. There's going to be disappointments and there's going to be elation, hopefully, in every season. Hopefully less disappointment, more elation. But whatever it is you have, you have to move on, and there's nothing we can do about what's behind us right now. It's all about this week, and at the end of the season we'll count up where we're at and then we'll get what we deserve either way, good, bad or indifferent.”

The Hawkeyes could play the spoiler role. The Gophers are at No. 8 in the College Football Playoff rankings and still have a shot at playing for the national title with an undefeated season.

“We've got a lot of respect for what they've done, and they've earned it the hard way,” Ferentz said. “They've gone out there and done it week after week. There are some teams maybe that don't require a lot of sweat to beat, but over the -- you play in the Big Ten and you're 9-0, it's not easy to get there. It's just a really tough thing to do. I'd say that's true of any Power Five conference with all due respect to everybody else. But if you're in a Power Five conference and you're 9-0, you're a legitimate football team, that's for sure.”

“They’re the ones who kind of control their own destiny right now,” Stanley said. “If we can come out and play loose, just go out there and really just give it all for 60 minutes, that’s all we can ask for.”

The rest of the Hawkeyes’ season started as soon as they began to prepare for the Gophers with different goals.

"The season keeps going,” Colbert said. “It’s not going to wait for us.”