Second down and 12 yards to go at the Illinois State 17-yard line midway through the second quarter. Bret Meyer hands the ball to Stevie Hicks. Hicks makes a couple of guys miss and there he goes — touchdown Iowa State.

But wait. There’s a flag — a holding call on Seth Zehr, erasing the six-point scamper.

It was penalties on plays like this that constantly held the Cyclones back on Saturday. Holding brings back a touchdown, an illegal block backs Iowa State out of field goal range.

When the game reached halftime with the score tied at eight, Iowa State had been penalized five times for 45 yards.

“It really hurts, obviously,” said ISU coach Dan McCarney. “Sometimes a false start doesn’t seem like it’s that big of a deal, but then all of a sudden here’s Stevie Hicks hitting his head on the goalpost and we have to bring it back because of holding.”

The 45 penalty yards in the first half were compounded by the fact the already-struggling offense managed only 130 yards of total offense — only 27 of those on the ground.

Penalties and mental mistakes were the themes coming from the Cyclones after the game, two key factors that held the Cyclones back from pulling away from Illinois State.

On the ensuing possession after the Hicks touchdown was called back, Iowa State had driven to the Redbird 30-yard line when receiver Todd Blythe was called for an illegal block.

The penalty pushed the Cyclones back to the 45-yard line and out of field goal range. Two plays later, Iowa State was flagged again for holding, though this one was declined.

“It hurts us a lot,” Blythe said. “Penalties, mental errors like that, those things kill drives.”

When the Cyclones weren’t being flagged for some type of violation, it seemed like they were turning the ball over.

Iowa State was driving into Redbird territory when Illinois State’s William Rolle forced Hicks to fumble. Jesse Caesar scooped up the ball and ran 69 yards to put the Redbirds ahead 8-2 with less than a minute to go in the first quarter.

“That’s something we’ve really got to clean up for next week,” Blythe said. “In the first half, we were killing ourselves.”

Again, with about 30 seconds to play in the first half, Iowa State had the ball first-and-10 on the Illinois State 18-yard line. Meyer threw the ball into the end zone where it was intercepted, for what appeared to be another turnover.

But Illinois State was called for roughing the passer, giving the ball back to the Cyclones. After a defensive holding call put Iowa State with another first-and-10 at the 3, Meyer ran right on an option play that was sniffed out perfectly by the Redbird defense. Meyer’s pitch to Hicks was errant and Illinois State recovered the fumble at the 14-yard line.

“We’ve got to do a much better job,” McCarney said.

“Not only turnovers but they get a score out of it. They executed, we didn’t.

“It’s been a staple of our offense that we have less turnovers and less fumbles by running backs.”

The Cyclones seemed to get it together during the second half, with just one penalty for five yards and no turnovers. Meyer fumbled once in the third quarter, but tight end Walter Nickel recovered the ball for the Cyclones.

The Cyclones managed to come up even in the turnover battle, forcing two interceptions — one by Adam Carper and one by Jason Berryman — but failed to recover either of two Redbird fumbles.

Even though the stat sheet didn’t show how badly the turnovers and penalties hampered the Cyclones, McCarney said the performance was inexcusable and sickening.

“We have to get it fixed and do a better job coaching and try to eliminate them next week,” he said.

“You don’t have to be a [Don] Shula or [Vince] Lombardi to figure out if we play for four quarters like that another game this year, we won’t win any more football games.”