With three straight victories under their belts, the Iowa Hawkeyes get set for this week’s visit to Illinois. The Hawkeyes are 5-2 after the 6-4 victory at Penn State while the Illini are 2-6 overall and 0-5 in the Big Ten. Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz expects to meet a motivated team that will be looking to bounce back from a 45-0 loss to Minnesota. He says the game Saturday was certainly probably not something Illinois was proud of, and he says his team has had one of those too. Ferentz says Illinois play hard in the previous games and played very well. He says his team is hardly the Philadelphia Eagles at this point, so they need a good week of prepartation. Ferentz says the Illini defense has been strong but has been bitten by big plays. He says if you look at it overall, they are physical and hit hard and do a lot of good things. Iowa had one punt blocked against Penn State and a bad snap led to a safety. Ferentz says those mistakes must be eliminated, as he says they need to get more consistent on special teams. He says the kickoff coverage had caused some heartburn, but did a great job Saturday. He says they need to put all the pieces together to have a chance.
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