Tomorrow night’s Iowa vs Northwestern game postponed

The Iowa Hawkeyes will have to wait longer than expected to try and extend their winning streak to five games, as word was officially announced that tomorrow’s game against the Northwestern is postponed due to “COVID-19 health and safety protocols” affecting the Wildcats.

Jeff Goodman of Stadium reported the Wildcats have just six players available which is below the threshold which would require the game to go on as scheduled.

Tomorrow night was scheduled to be a celebration of the life of Chris Street, with the Iowa Hawkeyes playing against a team coached by a player who faced Street in his last game, Chris Collins. The documentary will still air and be given the primetime billing it deserves. It will air after the Nebraska-Ohio State game at approximately 8p central with Iowa’s 1993 matchup against Michigan to follow the doc.

Iowa’s press release featured its fair share of posturing: “all distributed tickets for the Northwestern-Iowa contest will be valid for the new date and time, if the game is able to be rescheduled.” (emphasis mine)

One date sticks out as a possibility for Iowa: 1/31. It’s in the middle of the Hawkeyes’ biggest break - home contests between Rutgers on 1/29 & Illinois on 2/4. It would force the Wildcats to play four games in seven days, though, which is likely to be a hang-up on their end.

A particularly creative idea would be moving up Iowa’s home contest with OSU a day to 2/15 for an NBA-style home-and-home on back-to-back dates: 2/18 & 2/19. It’d get another weekend game out of the deal for Iowa and those crowds have been really into it, if not well-attended.

Ultimately, if and when the game gets played is contingent on how many Northwestern games are affected by this break. It’s our understanding that if the game is ultimately not played, it goes down as a Northwestern forfeit.

Iowa is 10-2 against Collins-coached Wildcat teams and currently riding an eight-game winning streak.