After watching Illinois get beaten by Iowa in about as ugly a loss as a team can have, there were a lot of questions that came into my head, and likely yours.

Is this quarterback carousel going to continue, or is there going to be one who will play the entire game?

If there is one definite quarterback, can he manage the game and throw effectively, avoiding costly mistakes?

What did Iowa do that was so effective stopping our offense that Penn State and Wisconsin didn’t?

Why couldn’t our defense get the Iowa offense off the field?

It seems that a lot of little problems were nipping at Illinois in weeks past, but not all at the same time. The passing game might not have been at its best, but the running game made up for it. The defense might have been giving up a lot of plays underneath but avoided the long gain.

It seemed like most everything that Illinois could have done wrong happened Saturday against Iowa in Kinnick Stadium.

Talking with one of my editors at work, trying to make sense of the game, we kicked around a lot of ideas of what went wrong, not trying to solely blame the loss on two penalties that could have been.

After awhile, we stopped trying to comprehend what happened and came to a realization: Illinois’ winning has probably been masking a lot of its deficiencies.

Coach Zook has been saying all season that the team isn’t anywhere where it needs to be yet, but it was hard to argue against him given the team’s record going into Iowa.

But after two hard-fought games against Penn State and Wisconsin, going to Iowa was going to be a test of the team’s resolve that it had seemed to have already proven in the two preceding games.

Blame energy levels that turned two-yard plays into four-yard plays. Blame Iowa’s 10 of 17 third-down conversion stat. Blame penalty calls that could have changed things and forced Iowa into making a hard decision to go for a fourth-down conversion.

Regardless of what you look at, one thing is clear: Illinois may not have gotten blown out, but it definitely got humbled by an Iowa team that it should have beaten, regardless of locale. It is hard to call the game a letdown because the score was so close, but it is hard not to because of the lack of consistency that had been present in weeks past.

It is likely a sign that people are taking note of Illinois because the way that Iowa was able to exploit Illinois’ weaknesses was not an accident.

Teams are doing their homework on Illinois. In years past, I’m sure most of Illinois’ Big Ten opponents counted Illinois as a victory on their schedule the way that fans here probably did with Western Illinois and will with Northwestern. Things are very much different now, and teams like Michigan, even if they don’t think that we are their rival, have to be ready for Illinois now. Illinois hasn’t had to adjust to this before.

Luckily or unluckily, depending on how you see it, Illinois will be on the national stage once again this week. As big as the Penn State and Wisconsin games were, this game may be bigger, because if Illinois can beat Michigan soundly this weekend, it will undoubtedly be vaulted back into the low 20s or high teens of the polls again.

The I-told-you-so’s will start to diminish and Illini will be bowl eligible.

I really don’t think the team even has to win to stay in good standing with the bowl committee, as long as the Illini stick with Michigan and show that they corrected the mistakes that plagued them against Iowa.

But if Illinois can’t keep up with Mike Hart and the Wolverines, things might get ugly.

And the questions will just get louder and more frequent.

Daniel Johnson is a junior is Communications. He can be reached at [email protected].