If Saturday’s football game had been played against a Big 12 opponent, even lowly Baylor, I think everyone would be feeling a little better about what they saw. The Cyclones, however, found themselves fending off a Division I-AA team for 58 minutes before 45,000 somewhat disappointed fans.

This game was not supposed to be that close. Now I would like to suspect we were looking past this game to Iowa. Everyone knows what a grave mistake that can be, so let’s count our lucky stars we got away with this one.

A win is a win.

That being said, if the offense plays like they did in the first half against a I-A school, we will be in serious trouble. Furthermore, if the defense plays like they did in the second half (five straight third downs converted against them) we will be in really serious trouble.

Obviously, there was good and bad in this game, and we have five days to multiply the good and work out the bad.

The Good:

For most of the game, Bret Meyer threw the ball well, and there weren’t any ugly drops by the receiving corps. Austin Flynn looked like a man possessed, and was very impressive both receiving and running with the ball.

The run defense looked good most of the game, and Jason Berryman made his return one to remember.

Tony Yelk can make extra points. That’s a start.

The Bad:

The kicking game in the first half. Wow.

Meyer’s ball handling, especially in the red zone, was downright ugly a few times.

Where was the running game? Aside from a couple of nifty runs in the second half, Stevie Hicks and Meyer were outperformed most of the game by Illinois State.

Obviously, the pass defense was ugly in the second half. Having said that, I’m sure DeAndre Jackson felt bad enough without hearing it from the student section for the next 30 minutes. We need this guy to be good, so let’s try to cut him some slack. You can bet Drew Tate is going to be looking at No. 4 next weekend, though, so we better work something out — and quickly.

The penalties. We might have put the Redbirds away in the first quarter had we not kept shooting ourselves in the foot with bad penalties.

The Blech:

Where did we find those referees? I can remain objective enough to identify when a call against my team is a good one, and those refs seemed to be hell-bent on making the Cyclones’ jobs harder than necessary. Then, later in the game, they seemed to be making compensatory calls against Illinois State to make up for the earlier gaffs. Very poor game calling on their part.

Let’s hope everyone gets on the same page before Iowa shows up Saturday.