Our picks for every IHSAA semifinal game in Iowa high school playoffs
Only two weeks remain in the 2026 Iowa high school football season, with the semifinals this week and s tate championship games next week. The penultimate round of the playoffs runs Wednesday, Nov. 11, through Saturday, Nov. 14, in Cedar Falls. Title games will be held Nov. 19 and 20 at the UNI-Dome. We’re back with another round of predictions this week. Throughout the season, we made educated guesses about who would win the 10 biggest games each week. But for the state semifinals, we're predicting all 14 matchups. We went 61-19 in the regular season, and we went 6-4 in our first set of playoff predictions. In the quarterfinals, we went 7-3, bringing our season-long record to 74-26. Here are our predictions for the Iowa high school football state semifinals . Class 5A Ankeny (9-2) vs. Johnston (10-1), Nov. 13 at 4 p.m. The Hawks' defense gets a lot of credit, but this offense has put up 40-or-more points in four of its last five games. When these two teams met in the regular season, though, Johnston held Ankeny scoreless, and if the Dragons play the same way, they'll find themselves competing for a state championship. Johnston 24, Ankeny
