The Iowa football team defeated Maryland, 31-15.

By Danny Payne
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Well, after a dominating first half, the Iowa football team slowed down in the second but did enough to beat Maryland, 31-15. Here are some quick observations, and we’ll have full stories as soon as we can. Thanks for following along today, everyone.

• Give Maryland credit — the Terrapins fought. Iowa’s offense did nothing in the second half, but the defense did a nice job keeping the Terps in check. Bend not break to the fullest extent.
• Desmond King is unbelievable. That 88-yard pick was and perfectly timed (before the special teams blew it). Cannot say enough about the junior’s play this season.
• Iowa struggled mightily against William Likely in the return game today and forced Marshall Koehn to make many more plays than he should have.
• I’m going to write more about what happened to Iowa’s offense in the second half this week, but all you need to know is this. At halftime, the Hawks had 240 yards of offense and finished with 293.
• For some reason, Maryland punted when down 16 points with four minutes remaining. I don’t know, man.
• Dillon Kidd has been really, really good today. He put Maryland at its own 3 with about three minutes remaining on its last drive of the contest.
• I’ll say this — Iowa did not look good in the second half, and the defense was forced to make more plays than Kirk Ferentz probably would have liked. This is Maryland, a bad team, and Iowa can’t do this against good teams. But, at the end of the day, the Hawks are 8-0 and that’s the most important statistic. Keep winning, and other things will take care of themselves.
• Stats: