Iowa State football doomed by litany of mistakes in 1-point loss to Texas Tech

AMES — Iowa State tempted fate throughout Big 12 play with its sluggish starts.

That troubling tendency finally caught up with the No. 11 Cyclones on Saturday as Texas Tech — a two-touchdown underdog — also crafted a strong finish to strut out of a sold-out and rain-drizzled Jack Trice Stadium with a 23-22 win.

“When you leave it to chance, right, and you don’t do your job with great precision and detail, it’s tough,” said ISU head coach Matt Campbell, whose miscue-plagued Cyclones (7-1, 4-1) sought the first 8-0 start in the program’s 133-year history. “Unfortunately that’s what we did tonight enough that it got us burnt.”

ISU had taken a a 22-17 lead on walk-on wide receiver Carson Brown’s 44-yard touchdown catch with 2:22 remaining, but the 2-point conversion pass from quarterback Rocco Becht failed.

The Red Raiders then marched down the field in 1:47 and eventually scored the game-winning touchdown on Tahj Brooks’ 5-yard run with 20 seconds left.

“I always have a feeling (about) our defense that they’re going to go out and get the stop, but unfortunately, I missed the 2-point conversion that could have helped us out at the end of the game,” said Becht, who completed 23 of 39 passes for 299 yards, two touchdowns and one interception. “That hurts a lot. But you’ve got to live with those decisions, and flush it away, and come back next week.”

Texas Tech (6-3, 4-2) snapped a two-game losing streak during which it allowed an average of 47 points. Red Raiders quarterback Behren Morton drove his team 71 yards in less than two minutes to drop the Cyclones from the dwindling ranks of the unbeaten.

Brooks rushed for 122 yards to keep his season-long string of 100-yard games alive.

“I would just say we beat ourselves,” said ISU cornerback Myles Purchase, who grabbed his first career interception late in the first half to set up Becht’s first touchdown pass to Jayden Higgins. “The penalties and just not making plays on the ball — I would say it’s just on us, honestly.”

The Cyclones entered Saturday leading all FBS teams for fewest penalty yards per game at 25.1. ISU more than doubled that number with 59 against the Red Raiders — and several of those infractions came in pivotal moments.

“It’s disappointing,” Campbell said. “Obviously you don’t want to play that way at the start of November and we did. So we own it. We live with it. We grow from it. And hopefully we’ve got enough courage about ourselves to correct it and move ourselves forward.”

Higgins hauled in 10 catches for 140 yards while making his seventh touchdown grab of the season. Darien Porter and Purchase both intercepted a pass.

Brown’s only catch of the game came on a third-and-13 situation, but the defense — which had been strong since the first quarter — couldn’t hold late as it so often does.

“I think the reality of it is is it’s a chess match at the end of the game, and you’re trying to put the defense in the best situation to be successful,” said Campbell, whose defense still held the Red Raiders 13 points below their previous 36.2-point scoring average. “They made one more play than we were able to defend, but I thought our kids did a lot of really good things there. Again, our detail and precision was off a little bit.”

That’s just enough to send the Cyclones tumbling to their first loss of the season, but as Campbell often says, his team will be defined by how it finishes, not any single game — regardless of outcome — along the way.

“This game will not define us in any way, shape or form,” Campbell said. “And the reality of it is, how we respond to it, and the team we become through it is what will define the 2024 Iowa State Cyclone football team. I think this gives us a great chance, for the first time, to now have to respond to the adversity of loss. What’s that look like? How do we grow from it? Man, do we have the same character that I would expect us to have going forward?

“We’ll see. What a great opportunity to grow.”

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