Hayden Fry had won two of his past three games in Ohio Stadium.
His 1995 team featured players still revered in Hawkeye football lore: Running backs Sedrick Shaw and Tavian Banks, receiver and kick returner extraordinaire Tim Dwight, future NFL standouts Ross Verba, Mike Goff, Casey Wiegmann, Jared DeVries and Damien Robinson – and control of their Big Ten destiny heading into November.
These Hawkeyes would go on to defeat a Washington Huskies team which had gone wire-to-wire ranked in both polls while winning all three of its rivalry games – Iowa State, Wisconsin and Minnesota – and placing four players on the All-Big Ten team at season's end.