Amid a tailspin stretch featuring five losses in six games, Michigan heads to one of its Big Ten houses of horrors, Carver-Hawkeye Arena, this weekend to try to figure things out on the road (Sunday, 4:30 p.m.).
The Wolverines and Hawkeyes both have top-25-ranked offenses and sub-100-ranked defenses. They both want to play fast, and they both struggle to get stops. And they both are going through it right now. The Hawkeyes are 5-4 and lost a pair of games by a combined 44 points this week to Purdue on Monday and Iowa State on Thursday.
Michigan’s last trip to Iowa City was a 93-84 overtime loss, a game where U-M’s win probability peaked at 95.7% in the final moments before a Payton Sandfort four-point play eventually sent the game to overtime.
In three games over four years, Juwan Howard’s teams have allowed an average of 87.3 points per game on the road in Iowa. The magic number for the Wolverines might be holding the Hawkeyes under 83 points, given that Michigan has scored 83, 84, and 84 points in those last three trips.