A week removed from what was described by its coach as the poorest game — a 52-17 loss to Missouri — in the past three years, the ISU football team regrouped to prevent another embarrassing loss.

However, the improved play of the Cyclones (3-4, 0-4 Big 12) was not enough in their 33-17 loss to No. 17 Texas A&M for its 99th Homecoming game on Saturday.

“We play to win,” said ISU coach Paul Rhoads after the game. “In order to win, you’ve got to play well. In order to play well, we need to play better and I thought we did that today.”

Iowa State held the Aggies (5-2, 3-1) to one rushing yard on eight carries in the first quarter as it jumped out to a 7-3 lead in front of the 51,131 fans in attendance.

“They were playing a little differently than they were showing on tape,” said A&M quarterback Ryan Tannehill. “We still had the right play calls, we just weren’t making the plays.”

However, lapses in the play of the defense in the second half ultimately proved costly for an ISU squad that came into the game dead-last in run defense in the Big 12.

“We practiced hard during the week on the run and emphasizing the run,” said junior linebacker A.J. Klein. “[They have] two explosive backs. They both get the same amount of carries and limiting them was the main part of our game plan.”

Christine Michael led the rushing attack for the Aggies, amassing a game-high 142 yards and one touchdown on 18 carries. Complementing Michael was Cyrus Gray, who rushed for 125 yards on 21 carries.

“I think they made some adjustments,” Klein said of the A&M offense. “They started cutting back the ball earlier than we expected. From what we’d seen on film, we knew they were going to cut it back, it’s just [about] flowing to the ball.

“They made it hard by spreading out the offense and made us run a long way to get to the running backs.”

Klein tied for a game-high 10 total tackles with cornerback Jeremy Reeves and linebacker Matt Tau’fo’ou. That figure is a career-high for Tau’fo’ou and ties a career-high for Reeves.

The defense tied a season-high in sacks with three — with defensive linemen Jacob Lattimer, Jake McDonough and Patrick Neal all getting the stops — against an A&M team that had allowed only three sacks all season coming into the game.

“I challenged coach [Wally] Burnham’s staff to bring more pressure when we needed to, we didn’t get that pressure with blitzes and zone blitzes only,” Rhoads said.

“I thought our guys played extremely hard tonight, I thought that showed. I thought we played fast and it was good to see that pressure.”

For the offense, ISU quarterback Steele Jantz continued his lackluster play in the first two series of the game, throwing an interception on his first pass attempt and going 0-for-4 in completions.

After those two series, redshirt freshman Jared Barnett was put into the game against an Aggie defense that led the nation in sacks coming into the game with 26.

“He wanted to run around a lot, so we had to end up spying him,” said A&M linebacker Sean Porter of Barnett. “He’s a pretty good quarterback for a freshman. They were out there doing some good things.”

Barnett’s favorite target of the day was junior Josh Lenz, who registered a career-high in both receptions (eight) and receiving yards (117).

“He’s had a very steady and solid junior year thus far and it gets to the point that that’s what you expect,” Rhoads said of Lenz. “It needs to be what we expect to find success and it’s good to see.”

As for the negatives, Rhoads said the offensive woes of his team still stem from a lack of execution.

The Cyclones went 6-of-18 on third-down conversions with seven of the 12 missed conversions coming from plays needing less than 10 yards for a first down.

“We left a lot of plays out there that we wish we could have back, but obviously you can’t go back and change those,” Lenz said. “So we’ve just got to work harder and practice on executing.”

Texas A&M concludes its all-time series with Iowa State 10-1 in the last game between the two schools as conference opponents. Texas A&M will be leaving the Big 12 and joining the Southeastern Conference in July 2012.