Iowa’s gut-punch loss to Purdue essentially knocked it out of the race for the Big Ten West, barring a mathematical miracle, but there are still three games left, and, including a bowl game, the Hawkeyes do have a chance to win 10 games.

It’s just a matter of staying focused after the goal of traveling to Indianapolis for the Big Ten Championship has pretty much faded away.

“Coaches really set the culture, but what happens on a day-to-day basis on really good teams is policing by players,” defensive lineman Parker Hesse said. “I think with adversity like this, it’s difficult, but as a senior … we just want to make sure that we stick together.”

Defensive lineman Chauncy Golston said that earlier this week, the defensive leaders, including Hesse, pulled the group aside and sent a message.

“They took as a group and were like, ‘We can’t let a loss beat us twice,’” he said. “After the 24 hours were up and we watched film, we had to put all our focus on [Northwestern].”

Ground games turn to the air

It hasn’t been a major factor all season long, but, at least in the past two weeks, the Hawkeyes have turned to their running backs in the passing game, and it’s worked well.

“That’s always been the plan all throughout the season,” tailback Ivory Kelly-Martin said. “Plans don’t always work out sometimes, but when we’re able to use that, whether that’s in the run game or the passing game, it definitely helps out. It pushes defenses to kind of game plan a little bit more against both things, and it worked out last week.”

Against Penn State, running back Mekhi Sargent sparked the Hawkeyes in the fourth quarter, and one of his best plays came on a 15-yard reception.

Then, just seven days later in Iowa’s loss to Purdue, Sargent and Kelly-Martin combined to catch 6 passes for 54 yards. Both had a 17-yard catch.

“Defenses may have seen us not throwing as much to the backs and tried to drop out more in coverage, which has now allowed for them to get a few more yards out of the backfield,” quarterback Nate Stanley said. “I think there’s been more situations where they’ve been able to release out of the backfield and catch the ball.”

Noah Fant is like… LeBron James?

Against Purdue, there was a lot of talk on Iowa’s inability to get free offensively in the secondary, and most of the finger pointing wasn’t at how good the Boilermaker defensive backs were.

Even Kirk Ferentz said after the loss that he was frustrated with the referees, especially in their decision not to call defensive in the secondary.

On Tuesday, tight end Noah Fant explained that he sees a double standard when he’s running routes, especially when a smaller defender is matchup up against him.

“When you get bigger bodies that are faster, I think – it’s kind of like how LeBron is in the NBA,” he said. “He drives through the lane, he’s so powerful, everybody can hack on him and everything and they don’t call a foul because he’s so big. It’s kind of a similar scenario to that with smaller DBs.”