Don't call him legend

By Rob Gray, correspondent

AMES - Legend?

Iowa State quarterback Steele Jantz met that loaded Big Game-driven word with a stone-faced glance.

“My first reaction is to stay humble about it,” said Jantz, a California native who threw for four touchdowns and 279 yards in Saturday's heart-stopping, comeback 44-41 3OT win over intrastate rival Iowa. “I don't like taking credit for it. I like to give all the credit to God and after that, I give it to my team.”

So he is third‚ kind of like NFL Hall of Famer Gayle Sayers of the Chicago Bears who penned a book that said as much.

And Jantz - entering his third Cyclone start in Friday's 7 p.m. ESPN2-televised road game at reigning Big East Conference champion Connecticut - clearly isn't crowing about his still-nascent major college career.

He's still green.

Relatively raw.

A West Coast-bred offensive playmaker still developing into ... the latest Big 12 Conference offensive player of the week, which was announced Monday.

“Whenever people praise me, or say stuff like that, I just try to stay humble,” reiterated Jantz, whose Saturday performance earned him that preeminent weekly plaudit.

Next stop: East Hartford, Conn. - and Jantz's and the 2-0 Cyclones' first road test of 2011.

His previous away game experience?

“Nothing outside the state of California,” said Jantz, who has a five touchdown to three interception ratio this season. “I guess from San Francisco to L.A.”

Jantz's name has become synonymous with “clutch” after a pair of razor-thin in-state triumphs.

He threw three interceptions in what could have been a disastrous week one loss to Football Championship Subdivision power Northern Iowa. He led two late game-winning touchdown drives against the Panthers in a 20-19 victory that day.

Then, trailing Iowa 24-17, he helped guide the Cyclones to the tying score with 1:17 left - part of a four-straight touchdown run to close the game.

“We executed,” said ISU offensive coordinator Tom Herman. “There's no magic pill, there's no magic offense, there's no secret play to run against Iowa and beat them and we just happened to find it. We pretty much had the same game plan for three years. We just executed.”

Greater precision will be required on the East Coast for the Cyclones' West Coast quarterback. A potentially unblemished pre-Big 12 season record hangs in the balance.

And the pressure shouldn't all fall on a cool-under-pressure-clutch-but-still-unproven quarterback's shoulders.

“Way too big of a hat and way too early for any kind of talk or thoughts like that,” Cyclone Coach Paul Rhoads said of the legend talk. “The thing that's not concerning to me is he would laugh that off as I would laugh that off. ... Unflappable seems to be a word I've been using to tag him a little bit. He's a guy who likes to work. He comes in and watches a lot of tape. He studies the game and works hard on the practice field, so I think any labels that are put on him like that, he'll just laugh it off as he should.”

Or shrug it off, at least.

“We're happy about the first two games,” Jantz said. “But we also know it's over and we know we need to worry about the next game.”

Fan grab

ISU safety Ter'Ran Benton enjoyed the wild, post-Iowa win celebration amid jacked up fans on the field, but conceded it got a bit out of hand.

He's good with it, though.

“They took my gloves, they took the rag I had on, they tried to take my helmet,” Benton said of the festive fan grab. “It was wild. And they picked me up and almost dropped me on my head, but I just know that these fans, man, they're amazing.”

Short week test

A short week means academic juggling, too. Cyclone cornerback Leonard Johnson earned praise for helping limit Hawkeye receiver Marvin McNutt to four catches for 61 yards. He wasn't so sure about his grade on Monday's Spanish test, however.

“I've been talking about this Spanish test all weekend,” Johnson said. “My mom's just been telling me to shut up. ... I got it out of the way.”