Iowa State’s offense sputters in 10-9 home loss to Kansas State

AMES — It came down to a fourth-and-7 play.

That’s what Iowa State faced with 2:29 left in Saturday’s tense Big 12 football game against No. 20-ranked Kansas State — and star Cyclones receiver Xavier Hutchinson couldn’t hold onto a pass from quarterback Hunter Dekkers along the sideline.

It would have resulted in a first down at the Wildcats’ 32-yard line, but instead, ISU’s offense shuffled off the field, doomed to a head-shaking 10-9 loss that played out before 60,561 fans at Jack Trice Stadium.

“You look at it, obviously it’s frustrating,” said Cyclones head coach Matt Campbell, whose team fell to 3-3 overall and 0-3 in conference play. “I told our kids, ‘In life, winners do lose, but losers hide.’ I’m not hiding from it. I don’t think any of us are hiding from it. We’ve got a great staff and we feel like we’ve got a really good football team.”

Good enough to have a chance to beat the 20th-ranked Wildcats (5-1, 3-0). Good enough to have a similar opportunity last week in a 14-11 loss at No. 19 Kansas. But not good enough to finish drives when it matters the most, hence the reference to frustration after ISU lost its third straight one-score game of the season.

“It’s so close, you know?” said tailback Jirehl Brock, who returned from an ankle injury to rush for 33 yards on 13 carries while playing at far less than 100 percent full health. “As an offense, you feel that it’s really close. You feel like it’s coming. It was just those critical points in the game where we just didn’t have the precision to execute.”

The Cyclones’ defense held Kansas State quarterback Adrian Martinez to 77 yards rushing on 19 carries and the league’s leading running back, Deuce Vaughn, to an inconsequential 23 yards on 10 carries. But Martinez’s biggest play came on broken coverage — and resulted in the game’s only touchdown.

That 81-yard throw to Philip Brooks in the first quarter came after ISU linebacker Colby Reeder narrowly missed sacking Martinez. It didn’t hold up, as Cyclone freshman kicker Jace Gilbert drilled all three of his field-goal attempts to bounce back from a 1-for-4 effort against the Jayhawks, but Kansas State capped the game’s scoring with Chris Tennant’s 30-yard field goal with 7:14 left.

“We did not play well,” said ISU safety Anthony Johnson, who made a big play in the first half by forcing a goal-line fumble that Reeder recovered in the end zone for a touchback. “I feel like we left a lot on the table. You can’t give up — I don’t know however many yards that first touchdown was. Every play matters. We didn’t play well. There’s a lot of things that we’ve got to fix, because at the end of the day, they don’t score, they don’t win.”

Dekkers completed 22 of 38 passes for 198 yards. Hutchinson caught eight passes for 100 yards. The Cyclones held Kansas State to 22 points below its previous per-game scoring average, but it wasn’t enough. Not when “every play matters."

“We’re not miles away,” Campbell said. “We’re inches away.”

But how can ISU bridge that minute, but significant, gap?

“We’ve jut got to be better,” Cyclones linebacker O’Rien Vance said. “Every aspect of the game, we’ve got to get better.”

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