When Paul Rhoads watched the ISU offensive line practice at the beginning of the year, it left a lot to be desired.

Now near the end of the 2013, the ISU coach can watch the unit and count higher than “one-thousand-three” in regards to how long the line’s pass protection can hold up, something that he wasn’t close to doing for a large part of the season.

Despite the Cyclones’ loss to Oklahoma (1-9, 0-7 Big 12), Rhoads noticed certain techniques from the linemen that showed improvement.

“It’s something as subtle as, ‘I’m leaving this defender, and I’m going up to this, and instead of hanging with two hands or a hand, it’s a push of the forearm,’” Rhoads said. “And I saw a couple of those really getting executed successfully as you’re buying time for the next guy to show up and clean up his block that attributed to those longer runs that we had in the first part of the game [against Oklahoma].”

In last week’s game against the Sooners, Iowa State sent its ninth starting offensive line unit in 10 games onto the field. It hasn’t been a secret that the offensive line has struggled with consistency this season, due in large part to injuries that have forced players into starting roles.

Iowa State has put a young group in the trenches on offense for most of the season and Saturday’s starters will be no different. The Cyclones will have a redshirt freshman, two redshirt sophomores and two redshirt juniors starting Saturday against Kansas.

Even though the group has been a patchwork of sorts throughout the season, the ISU coaches have noticed an added sense of comfort from the unit in pass protection for quarterbacks Grant Rohach and Sam Richardson as well as working to stimulate the ISU running game. The Cyclones feel they are close to having a complete game.

“If you watch the OU game, especially in the first half, you see a bunch of well-blocked plays that some squirted for good gains and others were very close,” said ISU offensive coordinator Courtney Messingham. “But I felt like the [offensive line] played better as a unit, especially in the running game.”

Van Der Kamp honored by ‘unexpected’ Senior Bowl invite

Iowa State fans found out on Monday that ISU senior punter Kirby Van Der Kamp was given an invitation to the 2014 Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala., but he was surprised to find out the night before.

In team meetings on Sunday, Rhoads announced that Van Der Kamp was selected to attend the January event, much to the surprise of the West Des Moines native.

He will be the first Cyclone to attend the Senior Bowl since Leonard Johnson and Kelechi Osemele attended in 2011. Van Der Kamp said he hopes to be as successful with his football career as those two NFL players have been.

“It will be a great experience and it’s just nice to know people have been watching me in my overall career and see something in me,” Van Der Kamp said.