Iowa was the team with the hype, but Iowa State was the team with the substance. They Cyclones' 23-3 stomping of the Hawkeyes was Dan McCarney's biggest victory at Ames and an enormous confidence booster. Iowa State gets a week off before playing at Army, then comes a Big 12 North showdown at Nebraska. Click on comments tab for story.
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Call It the Cyclone State
Iowa was the team with the hype, but Iowa State was the team with the substance. They Cyclones' 23-3 stomping of the Hawkeyes was Dan McCarney's biggest victory at Ames and an enormous confidence booster. Iowa State gets a week off before playing at Army, then comes a Big 12 North showdown at Nebraska. Click on comments tab for story.
Cyclones dominated, and nothing less
ReplyDeleteMike Hlas
Cedar Rapids Gazette
AMES — Iowa State? You could almost hear ABC football viewers from Amarillo to the Jersey shore blurting those two words in confusion Saturday afternoon.
Iowa State? Wasn’t Iowa supposed to be the really good team from that state, the Top Ten team, the team that’s become a regular guest to New Year’s bowls?
Iowa State? Iowa State.
No one who saw it in the Rockies, the Poconos, or the Amanas needs Saturday’s game broken down frame by frame. The Cyclones were sounder and tougher than Iowa in their 23-3 trampling of the nation’s 8th-ranked squad at Jack Trice Stadium.
"I don’t know that we dominated," ISU Coach Dan McCarney graciously said. "They still moved the ball, they still rushed the ball, they did some things."
But the bottom line?
"The bottom line in defenses is points," McCarney said. "When you only put three up, it’s just fantastic defense."
It wasn’t just big defense that had the Cy-Hawk Trophy veering to its new home well before game’s end.
"What surprised me," said ISU senior defensive lineman Nick Leaders, "is our offensive line really took over the game. They ate a lot of clock for us."
Forget the irrelevancy of Iowa’s 347-323 edge in yardage. The Hawkeyes had five turnovers, the Cyclones but one. Iowa State had the ball for 36S minutes and had it for at least 8:51 of each quarter. That’s dominance, plain and simple.
It isn’t as if McCarney’s program hadn’t known the high of beating their state-rival. As the coach let slip into his remarks twice in his postgame press conference, it’s now six wins over Iowa in the last eight tries. The come-from-way-behind 36-31 showstopper in Iowa City three years ago was one that all Cyclones will long remember.
But Saturday’s triumph may be the high-water mark of the 11-year McCarney era, including two bowl wins. This wasn’t catching lightning in a jar like the Iowa game of ’02. This wasn’t knocking off a Big 12 power in a year when that power wasn’t quite itself. This was manhandling a team from everyone’s Top Ten.
Cyclones quarterback Bret Meyer normally seems like he would rather run sprints in Saturday’s outdoor sauna than do any bragging. But he spoke for many in Cyclone Country when he said this:
"I hope people kind of start to recognize we can play football, that it ain’t just them over there that can play."
Meyer typically uses proper grammar, but he was trying to make a point. It, of course, had already been done. On the field.
The reason even some diehard ISU fans were leery of forecasting a Cyclone upset was because the offensive line wasn’t very good against Illinois State the week before. Austin Flynn, the first-year receiver who hauled in a first-quarter touchdown catch, acted like he was still the starting quarterback when he made sure he lauded the blockers afterward.
Flynn said the difference in the game "was the offensive line, by far."
"I think they controlled the line the entire time," he said. "They took a lot of criticism last week. They really stepped up and showed up."
As did the ISU defense. Its signature play of the day was, naturally, a takeaway.
After quarterback Drew Tate badly misread Iowa State’s coverage and threw a pass that Cyclone safety Steve Paris had no problem picking off, Tate played cowboy and chased down Paris on the sideline for the tackle.
But Tate led with his head against Paris, a fellow Texan. So make that two blunders in one for Tate, because he got his cowbell rung after playing cowboy. He spent the rest of the game sidelined, with a concussion. It was a feeling his team’s fans surely shared.
Hey, no one who pays actual attention should be surprised that Iowa State’s defense played well. A lot of talent and a fair amount of experience is spread across that unit. Incredibly, starting defensive end Jason Berryman wound up with one less tackle (zero) than Tate did Saturday. Try telling Iowa’s blockers or quarterbacks that Berryman laid a goose-egg.
All of ISU’s front seven were terrific. The secondary took no backseat, either. Cornerback LaMarcus Hicks had one more touchdown, on an interception return, than every Hawkeye.
But back to Berryman. Whether or not you agree with McCarney’s reinstating Berryman to the team after his 8S months in jail, you can see what Mac sees in the kid as a player. He came to this game hungry.
While Tate and running back played I-got-it-you-take-it on a fumble off a horrible center snap, Berryman rushed in and snatched it from both.
"There’s no limit to what we can do when we play as a team," Berryman said. "I’m ready to put the pads back on and get back out there tomorrow."
Similar enthusiasm will be hard to muster in the Hawkeye camp this morning. The feeling must be all too familiar to the one the Hawks endured last September after they got pasted at Arizona State, 44-7. Their defense Saturday was vastly superior to that effort, but getting whipped is getting whipped.
And the feeling in Ames?
"It’s just un-word-able," said Berryman.
That term didn’t previously exist. But lots changed here Saturday, didn’t it?