The Iowa Hawkeyes hope to bring home a much needed win and Floyd of Rosedale tomorrow when they close out the regular season at Minnesota. The Hawks are 7-4 after consecutive losses to Northwestern and Ohio State while the Gophers are 2-9 under interim coach Jeff Horton, who took over at mid-season after Tim Brewster was fired.

Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz is concerned about his team’s mental state, but not because of the loss to Ohio State. He says he’d have concerns either way if they were coming off two big wins. Lack of execution down the stretch has been costly for The Hawks who held fourth quarter leads in all four of their losses. The Hawks need a victory to avoid a three game losing streak to end the season.

The U.N.I. Panthers open the FCS national playoffs at home on Saturday against Lehigh. The Mountain Hawks are 9-2 and won the Patriot League title. U.N.I. coach Mark Farley who has been impressed with Lehigh’s offense, as he says they have a great line and two good quarterbacks. He says they have a bend, don’t break defense.

Since the Panthers did not get a first round bye they will need to win five games in the playoffs to win the national title. Farley says he loves the challenge as this is what it is all about. He says anything that’s ever worth achieving has a lot of diversity with it.

It will be Lehigh’s second trip of the season to Iowa. They opened with a 28-14 victory at Drake back on September fourth.

Elwin Huffman,KOEL, Oelwein contributed the U.N.I. portion of this story.