Going into Saturday, the buzz around the Iowa-Iowa State football game was how improved Iowa State looked and how good Iowa was.

It sure seems like the game showed one far more than the other. Iowa simply dominated all facets of the game, plain and simple.

There are two ways these players can take the loss to Iowa — and remember, these guys are young and sometimes have fragile psyches. They can either use it as motivation or they can let it destroy their confidence.

If we believe what coach Paul Rhoads and Austen Arnaud say, there’s nothing to worry about. But we’re all human, and what happens if when they’re playing Texas or Oklahoma they get down 14 or 21 points?

Will they rally around each other and fight back, or will they lie down and let the pressure get to them?

So now its up to Rhoads and his staff to figure out where to go from a loss that bad. They have to regroup and refocus their players away from the things they didn’t do well to the things they know they can do well.

There might have been little things that Rhoads saw that he liked — like the missed tackle total, which was lower than he expected — but overall there wasn’t much positive to take away from the game.

They did finally reach the end zone for the first time in nearly 18 quarters of play, but it was in garbage time after Kirk Ferentz pulled all of his starters and some of the second-string players.

During the week leading up to the game, Arnaud talked about improving on his performance from the year before.

He didn’t come close.

There are a number of reasons why that could’ve happened: rust from being on the sideline so much in the first half, lack of a rhythm on offense, or simply the fact that Iowa has one of the best defensive lines in the country.

Last year’s game had the feeling that Iowa State shot itself in the foot. This time around, there was never that feeling. Iowa had Iowa State covered everywhere.

But coming out of such a lopsided loss, Rhoads isn’t worried about his team’s confidence.

“[The players are] disappointed and challenged to play better,” Rhoads said. “I don’t think they’re walking around searching for confidence.”

Arnaud echoed his coach, repeating the familiar chorus of being focused on the week ahead.

“I’m very confident. You’re blessed to play a new game each week,” Arnaud said. “This is a new week, it’s Kansas State, it’s not Iowa anymore. We put our issues to bed last night after practice with our corrections on the field.”

It takes every player playing at their absolute best to compete with teams like that, and if the Cyclone players aren’t completely confident in what they can do, more losses like Iowa will happen.

Rhoads stressed that he and his staff won’t let that happen.

“You have to play the game and see if they’re resilient enough to carry it over to Saturday and execute,” Rhoads said. “We stress the importance of letting games go. You can hang around a win too long as well [as a loss]. We don’t want the Iowa loss to create a second loss as well.”

If they can have short memories, wash the proverbial stink away and play to the potential people — myself included — say they have, things won’t go nearly that bad for the rest of the season.

Sometimes you see teams take a loss like this and use it as motivation, refusing to let something like that happen again.

That being said, talking about it only accomplishes so much. At some point, the players and coaches have to put what they’ve been talking about on the field.

And until then, all the rest of us will be able to do is wonder.