For three games, the Cyclones started games slow, turned the ball over and had to come back to win each game. For three games, quarterback Steele Jantz made a name for himself by coming through in the clutch for Iowa State (3-1, 0-1 Big 12).

In the fourth game, it finally caught up with them.

“You can’t play like we did to start this game, again unfortunately, and win against the 17th-ranked team in the country,” said ISU coach Paul Rhoads. “We will continue to work and find answers to some of the foolish things that are taking place, which include turnovers.”

Iowa State lost to now-No. 11 Texas 37-14 a year after the Cyclones traveled to Austin, Texas, and shocked the Longhorns with a 28-21 victory. In that game, Iowa State forced four Texas turnovers, while committing only one itself.

This year, the Cyclones gave the ball away three times — twice on fumbles from Josh Lenz and James White, once on a Steele Jantz interception — and had a blocked punt returned for a touchdown.

After the game, Jantz put much of the weight on his shoulders for the mistakes.

“I feel like most of [the mistakes] was me with the turnovers and not making some of the right calls,” Jantz said. “We’ve just got to improve the mental part of the game.”

Three instances in the game point directly to Jantz’s mentioning of the “mental part of the game.” First, a personal foul call by ISU cornerback Leonard Johnson — who would later be carted off on a stretcher following a helmet-to-helmet hit — when the senior was flagged for unnecessary roughness, a penalty that kept Texas on the field after the Cyclones had stopped the Longhorns on third down.

Second, wide receiver Darius Reynolds was flagged for a holding call that brought back a touchdown run by White, and third, wide receiver Darius Darks was flagged for offensive pass interference after he pushed off the Texas cornerback before catching a touchdown pass from Jantz.

“Really, we just kept shooting ourselves in the foot this game,” Reynolds said. “It’s just something we’ve got to eliminate, the turnovers and the penalties, then we’ll be fine after that.”

The offensive miscues put plenty of pressure on the ISU defense early in the game as well. In the three Texas drives following ISU turnovers — each of which garnered points, 13 total — the Longhorns’ average starting field position was at the ISU 25-yard line.

ISU linebacker Jake Knott said he thought the defense played well considering the circumstances, but that once again mistakes allowed Texas opportunites — ones it cashed in on effectively.

“I thought overall we did pretty well,” Knott said. “We can’t make stupid, mental errors. That’s basically what happened today, and Texas really capitalized on it and got the best of us.”

Now the Cyclones must look ahead to correct those mistakes if they want to be successful going forward.

“To address [turnovers], you do more ball security drills and we will get started on that quickly [on Sunday] to prepare for a trip to Waco against a very good Baylor football team,” Rhoads said.

Jantz echoed his coach, saying that correcting mistakes starts with getting together as an offense and going over what went wrong and how to correct it.

White, who ran for a team-high 71 yards and one touchdown on 11 carries, said he also knows that if the Cyclones are going to win games going forward, the mistakes must go away.

“Coach [Rhoads] has been telling us all season long that we can’t keep making mistakes over and over and expect to win against good teams,” White said. “We face adversity and it’s something we have to work past, but we can’t keep making the same mistakes every game.”