NEW YORK — Jeff Woody said it was the most frustrating game he has played.

The redshirt sophomore running back could only hang his head as the ISU football team lost to Rutgers 27-13 in the Pinstripe Bowl — its second trip to a bowl game in three seasons — on Friday at Yankee Stadium.

“We just weren’t executing,” Woody said. “It wasn’t anything that they were doing that we didn’t know they were going to do, it’s just we didn’t do it well. We couldn’t execute, we couldn’t complete a pass, we couldn’t stop blitzes when they were coming.

“We didn’t execute the way we needed to.”

The collective eyebrow of the ISU faithful raised in the second quarter when Steele Jantz was put into the game at quarterback in place of starter Jared Barnett.

“You can’t have the mindset where you won’t go in because when you do go in, you’ll do really bad,” Jantz said, who had not played since Oct. 29. “Every game I just try and tell myself, ‘I’m gonna go in, I’m gonna go in,’ and I did this game.”

Jantz finished the game having gone 15-of-31 passing for 197 yards and two costly interceptions.

It was revealed later by ISU coach Paul Rhoads that Barnett had been injured during the course of the game.

“They sent a blitz on that play and a guy hit me right in the knee and my cleat was stuck in the ground, so it kind of pushed my knee backwards,” Barnett said. “It wasn’t anything terrible, I probably could have [gone] back in personally. But it was coach Rhoads’ decision to take me out and we stuck with it as a team.”

Soon, the offense would struggle under the tutelage of Jantz, and the Cyclones (6-7, 3-6 Big 12) would watch their 6-0 lead accumulated in the first quarter vanish by giving up 17 unanswered points before halftime.

“It’s been a long time since Dec. 3 and we had a lot of preparation, a lot of practice time since then and there’s always competition taking place on the field,” Rhoads said. “Steele is back 100 percent healthy — or close to it — with that foot [injury].”

Rhoads said Barnett’s injury was not the reason for the switch, but declined to go into further detail.

Even with the ISU offense’s struggles, credit was given to the RU defense.

“They were executing better than we were and they were causing big plays [to happen] for them,” Barnett said of the opposing defense. “They were getting us to a lot of three-and-outs and making us punt a lot and that really shot down our execution and made it hard for us to do things right.”

The ISU defense experienced some woes of its own, allowing 369 total yards and a 100-yard rusher for the Scarlet Knights (9-4, 4-3 Big East) in Jawan Jamison.

“We had some problems with tackling early on in the game,” said linebacker A.J. Klein. “[We had] too many missed tackles and long runs, extra yardage given up that we could limit.”

Klein tied an ISU bowl (Matt Blair in 1971 Sun Bowl) record in total tackles with 16 — five of which were solo.

“As a defense, we did a better job adjusting in the second half,” Klein said. “But obviously it wasn’t enough tonight.”

Jamison, who amassed 131 rushing yards and two touchdowns from 27 carries, became the ninth 100-yard rusher allowed by the ISU defense this season.

Described as a “thick” runner by Rhoads with a 5-foot-8-inch, 198-pound frame, Jamison created problems for a defense that was anemic in stopping the run this season.

“He absorbed the blows extremely well,” said ISU linebacker Jake Knott. “If you hit him hard, he would just bounce off and keep his balance or stiff-arm. He did a fantastic job of being able to break tackles tonight.”

Overall, Rhoads said the game played out the way he expected, despite the disappointment of his team.

“Both sides gave great effort,” Rhoads said. “It was the style and type of game that I thought it was going to be. The team that played the best football game won the football game.”