Play of the Day: Soup's on!

[Lobster Bisque]

They're the surprise team of the Big Ten this year. No, not Indiana. No, not Michigan. I'm talking about Iowa. Little old lowly Iowa at 11-9 overall and 3-4 in the B1G. Year two of Fran McCaffery's rebuild is coming along nicely as the Hawks have already equaled last season's win total.

They're the hometown team but this is far from a homer call.

6-units Iowa -4.5 vs. Nebraska

Iowa has had almost 9 full days to prepare for its initial meeting with the Huskers since Nebraska joined the Big Ten. Nebraska is an equally unimpressive 10-9 overall but just 2-6 in league games. They haven't been terrible away from the Devaney Center in conference play. If you take out the loss at Columbus against OSU their two other losses were by 4 and 5 points to Illinois and Wisconsin, respectively. Both those places are tougher to play than Carver-Hawkeye Arena - especially with a 6 PM tip on a Thursday night. I'd be awfully tempted to hit Nebraska here given how equally mediocre these two teams are. And there's my red flag.

Nine days is a long layoff, especially for a team like Iowa which seems to feed off the momentum of playing win or lose. I'm counting on a little rust and a touch of overconfidence, as strange as that may sound, making things interesting early on. But I'm also counting on the fact that with Nebraska being a guard-oriented team that Iowa won't have any trouble putting the Huskers away tonight in Iowa City. Teams with great post players kill the Hawks and Jorge Brian Diaz isn't a great post presence. This should be a 6-8 point victory for Iowa.

I just hope it doesn't come down to free throw shooting because with a few exceptions Iowa is god-awful from the stripe.

Also making a small play on the total going over 131.5.

[Earl]

Good Luck with it. Line is going the wrong way IMO.

[cuse_man]

gl man.. ur avvy is killing me.. been on a bit of a lobster binge lately