STILLWATER, Okla. — The main question for ISU football after a gut-wrenching loss remains: How does one fix an inconsistent offense?

“Piece by piece,” said ISU coach Paul Rhoads after his team’s 31-10 loss to Oklahoma State on Saturday. “You’ve got to continue to examine the plan that you’re coming into it with — what’s right, what’s wrong, why was it wrong — [and] 11 guys have got to execute.

“There’s no different play call that you can make to catch a ball. So you look at every single piece of it — coaching, playing, executing, capabilities of the personnel — and continue to move along.”

Rhoads said he kept a battle for the starting quarterback spot between Jared Barnett, Steele Jantz and Sam Richardson in house after Barnett struggled in the team’s six-point loss to Kansas State on Oct. 13.

Barnett got the start for the Cyclones (4-3, 1-3 Big 12) before eventually getting benched at the beginning of the fourth quarter in favor of Jantz. Barnett completed 49 percent of his passes while throwing one touchdown and one interception.

“Sending a lot of blitzes was really helping them a lot,” Barnett said of the OSU defense. “Them flushing me out of the pocket and making me have to throw and run and making me have to pull it down and run — that made it a lot harder for us to get our offense on track.”

On a positive note, Barnett passed for more than 200 yards for the second time in nine career starts — the only other time coming in the upset win against then-No. 2 Oklahoma State last season (376 yards).

Oklahoma State (4-2, 2-1) upheld its prestige as the nation’s top-ranked offense, gaining 625 total yards to boost its average to 605.3 per game.

The ISU offense sputtered, however, as it was forced to punt on nine of its 14 drives. Seven of those punts directly resulted from three-and-outs by the offense.

“It’s frustrated,” said running back Jeff Woody of the mood of the offense. “We’re so close to being firing on all cylinders, but we’re just a hair short. That’s the frustrating part, it’s not a big thing.”

Aside from Barnett’s 49 yards rushing — most of which were gained as a result of scrambling from defenders — the offense rushed for 52 yards on 16 carries (3.25 average).

During the past two games in the absence of leading rusher James White, the running backs have accounted for 42.7 percent of the team’s total rushing yards.

After a loss like this, Rhoads said the worst thing his team could do would be to point fingers and assign blame. However, Rhoads did not deny there’s a chance some of his players could be holding in their criticisms.

“It’s human nature,” Rhoads said. “We’re 4-3, and we’re a good football team, and we know we’re a good football team, but we want more.

“There’s nobody that got on the plane that wanted anything else than victory, but that’s why you can’t finger-point.”