Given that these Spartans were coming off seven consecutive losses, and the Hawkeyes had just hung tough against two strong, ranked opponents in Oregon and USC, a reasonable fan would probably assume that the Hawkeyes would roll over the Spartans for a dominant victory. 

This reasonable fan, however, does not yet understand what Iowa football is capable of. 

The match was a puntfest early on, but a great return from Kaden Wetjen set up Iowa’s offense deep in Michigan State territory. Quarterback Mark Gronowski dropped back and scrambled left away from the pressure. 

The entire stadium was shouting, “Throw it, Mark!” He did throw it. Into double coverage. For an interception. 

Luckily, the defense got another stop, and Wetjen decided he was going to take matters into his own hands. He did his thing and made the Spartans’ special teams look silly on the way to a 62-yard punt return touchdown, his fourth return touchdown of the season. 

“Kaden Wetjen single-handedly kept us in the game today in a lot of ways with just his returns,” Ferentz said. He was absolutely right again, especially since this touchdown would be the only points the Hawkeyes would score in the first three quarters of action. 

Michigan State got on the board with a field goal in the second quarter, but after an interception by defensive back Zach Lutmer, Iowa had a chance to answer with a field goal of its own. Unfortunately, Stevens pushed his 53-yard kick wide left as the score remained 7-3 at the break. 

Iowa Hawkeyes defensive back Zach Lutmer (6) celebrates an interception in the second quarter of the game against the Michigan State Spartans on Saturday, November 22, 2025, at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City, Iowa (Jeffrey Becker / Jeffrey Becker-Imagn Images)

The Spartans came out of the break firing on all cylinders as they knocked the football away from Gronowski to set up a 45-yard touchdown bomb from quarterback Alessio Milivojevic to receiver Chrishon McCray. 

They kept their momentum going as another connection to McCray gave Michigan State a 17-7 lead heading into the final quarter.

At this point, it looked as if Iowa was gearing toward another disappointment as they trailed a lowly 3-7 squad at home on Senior Day by double digits. 

They eventually managed to kick a field goal, but a turnover on downs at Michigan State’s 33 with 3:45 to go made the situation feel dire. But not to this Hawkeye team. 

Michigan State Spartans receiver Chrishon McCray (13) catches a touchdown defended by Iowa Hawkeyes defensive back Deshaun Lee (8) in the third quarter of the game on Saturday, November 22, 2025, at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City, Iowa (Julia Hansen / Iowa City Press-Citizen)

Their next drive made it all the way to the endzone as a great throw and catch from Gronowski to receiver Jacob Gill meant the Hawkeyes had found a way to tie the game with 1:29 left. 

Better yet, the defense came up with another clutch stop and gave the offense a chance to win, starting at their own 21-yard line with 41 seconds left and a timeout. 

Gronowski did his job and led his team into field-goal range, with a big help from a highlight-reel catch by receiver Reece Vander Zee. 

Once again, Drew Stevens trotted onto the field to kick a 44-yarder for the win. He was no stranger to this situation; he’d kicked game-winning field goals before. 2023 against Northwestern in Wrigley Field and last year’s home finale against Nebraska are two examples. 

But on the other side of the coin, he had missed a field goal earlier in the game. Earlier this season against Indiana, he missed a go-ahead field goal in the final minutes. 

Did Stevens have one final game-winner left in him? You bet he did. 

He drilled that 44-yard field goal at the buzzer to lift Iowa to a 20-17 victory. Should the game have been that close? Probably not, but kicking a game-winning field goal is a pretty good way to cap off your final collegiate home game and send the rest of your senior teammates back to the locker room with smiles on their faces.

This Friday, the Iowa Hawkeyes will end the regular season playing for the Heroes Trophy on Black Friday at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska. While the Cornhuskers are 7-4, they are missing their starting quarterback, meaning this should be a comfortable win for the Hawkeyes. We’ll see you all when they win 13-10 on a last-second field goal…again.

The post One Last Walk-Off: Iowa beats Michigan State, 20-17 appeared first on KRUI Radio.

Starting with the 2015 Big Ten Champs, the Michigan State Spartans possibly have the biggest loss to overcome. On the offensive side, the Spartans lost three-year starter Connor Cook, who graduated this spring. In 2015, Cook completed 229 of 408 passes for 3,131 yards, 24 TD’s and only 7 interceptions. In his career at MSU, Cook threw for 9,194 yards and 71 touchdowns, breaking Kirk Cousins’ records as best in Michigan State’s history at the position. At the moment, senior Tyler O’Connor looks to be the presumptive starter at QB for 2016. O’Connor came in against Ohio State last season where he threw 7-12 for 89 yards and a TD.
Continuing in the East, Ohio State will have to overcome the loss of running back Ezekiel Elliott if they want to make a run at the B1G Championship. In the 2016 NFL Draft, Elliott went fourth overall to the Dallas Cowboys. In Zeke’s junior year in 2015, he rushed for 23 TD’s and 1,821 yards on 289 carries, averaging 6.3 yards per carry. He also averaged 7.6 yards per catch on 27 receptions for 206 yards. The presumptive starter for 2016 would be senior Bri’onte Dunn, but he’s only had 287 rushing attempts in his career under Ezekiel Elliott, and according to head coach Urban Meyer, Dunn and freshman Mike Weber are “neck and neck” to take the position in the fall.

On to the East, the Iowa Hawkeyes will look to return to the Big Ten Championship in 2016 after losing to MSU by three points last season. The Hawkeyes’ biggest loss coming off the 2015 season will be three-year starting WR Tevaun Smith, who graduated this spring. Smith finished the 2015 season with 563 yards on 32 receptions, and finished his career at Iowa with exactly 1,500 yards on 102 receptions. Iowa will look to replace Tevaun with seniors Matt VandeBerg and Riley McCarron, as well as sophomore Jerminic Smith.

Finishing in the East, the Wisconsin Badgers will look to replace WR Alex Erickson if they hope to battle through a tough season and get back to the B1G Championship Game after losing to Ohio State in 2014. Erickson finished the 2015 season with 978 yards on 77 receptions, averaging 12.7 yards per catch. He finished his career with the Badgers with 1,887 yards and six TD’s. Wisconsin will look to senior Robert Wheelwright and junior Jazz Peavy to pick up the slack in Erickson’s absence.

Only time will tell if these key losses will prevent one of the four power house Big Ten teams from returning to the conference championship. Although replacing a star player is always difficult, a truly great team will manage the transition from one skill player to the next in their pursuit of success.

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When I first saw the film, I decided to hold off on writing about it, in order to give myself some time to really digest it. Even after this, I can only say that Chi-Raq is a complicated, or perhaps more accurately a “messy” film, that still has moments of Lee’s indubitable brilliance.

The plot of Chi-Raq is a little difficult to explain. It revolves around the Spartans and the Trojans, two fictional street gangs in Chicago. Lysistrata, the girlfriend of the leader of the Spartans, organizes a sex strike between all of the women of Chicago; they will refuse to have sex until the streets are cleared of all guns and violence.

To top it off, the entire story is told in verse. That’s right. In the style of the Greek tragedy that it is based on, every piece of dialogue rhymes. Samuel L. Jackson plays a smooth-talking narrator of sorts, and the film features quite a few moments that exist outside of the story world; with characters speaking directly to the audience. I think that two particular characters, and the different aspects of the story they represent, best highlight what works and what doesn’t in the film.

The first is Jennifer Hudson’s character of Irene. Irene is a mother whose daughter is killed while playing in the streets; she is hit by a stray bullet in a drive-by shooting. She represents the more serious side of the film, that is committed to taking on the causes and effects of the marriage between gun violence and gang culture in America. There is a long funeral service scene, in which John Cusack plays a white reverend in a black church based on the real life Reverend Michael Pfleger, that delves deep into the political causes and potential solutions to these issues. Scenes where Irene literally cleans the blood of her own child off the streets are powerful, if borderline over-dramatic, but seem to at least treat the serious issues they discuss with respect.

On the other hand, Nick Cannon’s character of Chi-Raq represents where the film really goes wrong for me. Chi-Raq is the leader of the Spartan gang, and of all the actors in the world to use to represent a hardened gang leader, Spike Lee chose Nick Cannon…For the most part, Chi-Raq sulks about in the film missing his girlfriend. The sex strike is a ridiculous concept, and it is treated as such in the film. This story line is farcical, and serves as a sort of comedic relief for the more serious moments.

The problem is, there are more moments focused on the increasingly wacky state of the sex strikers, and many of these moments lose their likability when bogged down with constant sex jokes that quickly lose their humor. Its difficult for the viewer to jump between the seriousness of Irene’s story line to the insanity of the sex strike. It doesn’t help that the film occasionally tries to inject a more serious tone into Nick Cannon’s story, and at times it feels dangerously close to trivializing an already extremely controversial issue.

The truly awkward tension between these two story lines can most poignantly be felt in the climax. I won’t spoil it for anyone, but as you can imagine, trying to somehow marry these two widely different tones is more than the film can handle.

There are a few other bones that I have to pick with the movie, and points that many others have raised as well. First, there is the status of Spike Lee as a famous New York based film director, making a movie as an outsider about the problems of Chicago.

There’s also some issues with gender. While the film goes out of its way to try to portray Lysistrata as a hero and a powerful female character, I can’t help but feel that this point falls flat when in reality, her only power comes from her sexuality. Sure, she might wield a lot of influence: she even starts a world-wide sex strike revolution. And the idea of the sex strike comes from real historical events, in which women made a real and powerful difference in the history of their communities. And I don’t want to write those stories off. That being said, it still definitely feels like the film is unable to see much in its female characters beyond their roles as sex objects or mothers.

Lastly, there is one final idea I’d like to posit. I don’t claim this as total fact, but I don’t remember at any point seeing the phrase “A Spike Lee Joint” during the film. To my understanding, Lee only uses this phrase on films in which he feels he has total creative control, which is not a lot in his long filmography. However, he did use the phrase in the new story mode of the video game NBA 2K16, which he wrote and directed. It’s hard to believe that he was given creative control over that title, but was somehow at the mercy of the studio in such a strange film as Chi-Raq, but it’s an interesting idea nonetheless.

Click here to see if Chi-Raq is playing in a theater near you, and check out the trailer for the film below:

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Unfortunately for the Iowa Hawkeyes (12-1), their road to a perfect season and a playoff berth came to a screeching halt courtesy of a 22 play, 82-yard touchdown drive punctuated by an L.J. Scott 1-yard touchdown run that took 9:04 off the clock and gave Michigan State (12-1) their second Big Ten championship in three years with a 16-13 win over the Hawkeyes.

The first saw early mistakes on both sides turned into points. On Iowa’s third play from scrimmage, a connection from quarterback C.J. Beathard to tight end Henry Kreiger Coble went from an eight yard completion to a fumble recovery by the Michigan State defense deep in Iowa territory. The Spartans turned that turnover into a 23-yard field goal from Michael Geiger to give Michigan State a 3-0 lead.

On Michigan State’s next possession, quarterback Connor Cook saw a pass go awry and Iowa linebacker Josey Jewell intercepted the senior quarterback deep in Michigan State territory. The Hawkeyes, like their counterparts, turned their turnover into a Marshall Koehn 24-yard field goal and a tie game after a quarter.

Iowa added another field goal from the Solon, IA, native in Koehn to give Iowa a 6-3 lead at recess.

The common themes for Iowa were missed opportunities in the red zone and settling for field goals, as well as poor success on third down conversions keeping the defense on the field for nearly eighty percent of the second half. Michigan State had possession of the football for nearly 23 of the 30 minutes in the second half, and they took full advantage of an exhausted Iowa defense down the stretch.

The one big play on offense from Iowa came on an 85-yard touchdown connection from C.J. Beathard to senior wide receiver Tevaun Smith 11 seconds into the fourth quarter to give Iowa back a lead they eventually relinquish at 13-9.

After the teams traded off punts, it was Michigan State’s drive that will live in infamy in East Lansing that ripped the hearts out of nearly 40,000 Hawkeye fans who made the trip and left to pick up the pieces after a heartbreaking defeat.

The drive ultimately gave the Spartans and head coach Mark Dantonio the conference championship they coveted, and the playoff spot that comes with it.

In Iowa’s case, there are multiple options as to where they be playing a bowl game in either late December or early January. It is likely to come down to either the Rose Bowl against Stanford, the Fiesta Bowl, or the Peach Bowl. We will know for sure later today when all the bowls will be announced to the public and the planning and preparation will begin in earnest for wherever Iowa will close out their outstanding season.

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