Last season, a Texas Tech football team averaging 467 yards and 39 points per game came to Ames and scored just 17 in a 14-point loss to Iowa State.

Forgive ISU head coach Dan McCarney if that result doesn’t inspire great confidence in him, because his Cyclones travel to Lubbock, Texas, this weekend to face a team that’s averaging 591 yards and 46 points a game.

“We’re not going to shut them out, we’re not going to stop them. No one else has,” McCarney said Tuesday.

Red Raider quarterback B.J. Symons is completing 67 percent of his passes and has mind-boggling totals this season of 2,467 passing yards, 24 touchdowns and only four interceptions in his first season as a starter, replacing departed career total offense leader Kliff Kingsbury.

Only three ISU quarterbacks have ever thrown for that many yards over an entire season. Only Todd Bandhauer (in 1997) has even cracked 20 touchdown passes in an entire season.

“This time last year, Kingsbury was hot, and he was a guy that everybody in the country was talking about,” McCarney said.

“Symons right now, through the first five games, is playing better.”

McCarney said the ISU defense’s chances of disrupting the Texas Tech offensive machine increase with the probable returns of defensive end Jason Berryman and defensive tackle Jordan Carstens from injuries. But to end a three-game losing skid, win their first conference away game since 2001 and hand Texas Tech its second loss of the season, the Cyclones need to perform a lot better on offense.

“We’ve put our defense in some tough positions,” said senior receiver Lane Danielsen, Iowa State’s all-time receiving yardage leader. “We kind of let the team down.”

To have a chance at winning, McCarney said, the Cyclones can’t allow Texas Tech to dominate time of possession. No. 1 Oklahoma had the football 37 minutes to Iowa State’s 23 in a 53-7 rout of the Cyclones Saturday.

“You label it however you want to, categorize it however you want to we have to score points in this game to have a chance to win this game,” he said.

Iowa State has not scored an offensive touchdown since Hiawatha Rutland’s 2-yard run with 10:05 left in the first quarter against Northern Illinois Sept. 27.

Danielsen said Iowa State can still be successful in the Big 12 despite playing a freshman, Austin Flynn, at quarterback — if the rest of the offensive unit does its part.

“The receivers [especially] haven’t done a good job of making his job easy,” Danielsen said.

Senior receiver David Banks-Bursey summarized the offense’s task.

“It’s got to be our week,” he said.