With just over a minute left in Saturday’s season-opening game against Northern Iowa, Iowa State was supposed to be wrapping up an easy victory against an overmatched Division I-AA foe.

Instead, with 1:12 showing on the clock, a Jack Trice Stadium crowd of 48,088 was on its feet, cheering the first-team ISU defense to pick up a fourth-down stop. The Panthers, trailing 17-10 with the ball on the Iowa State 48-yard line, needed four yards to continue their potential game-tying drive.

This was not the situation ISU head coach Dan McCarney wanted that late in the game.

“We need to make a lot of improvement this week,” McCarney said Monday.

Northern Iowa stayed alive by getting the game’s only turnover and holding the ISU offense largely in check throughout. The outcome came down to the final fourth-down play.

UNI quarterback Tom Petrie dropped back and threw to leading receiver Marlus Mays, who had broken free on an underneath route and had room to run.

But Mays, who finished with seven catches for 38 yards, saw the ball bounce off his hands. Iowa State took over on downs and ran out the clock, securing the win.

“We went to our go-to receiver,” UNI head coach Mark Farley said. “We all saw the same thing.”

After the game, ISU players said they were pleased with the victory, but recognized a myriad of problems in their play.

“We came out flat and made some mistakes,” said sophomore nose guard Nick Leaders. “We played pretty good, but we had a few mistakes — we had a lot of costly penalties, a few mental mistakes.”

Senior running back Michael Wagner, who led the Cyclones with 87 yards on 17 carries, said the offense would improve next week.

“We had the first-game jitters,” he said.

ISU redshirt freshman quarterback Austin Flynn threw for a touchdown and ran for another in his debut as the Cyclone starter.

“They had a lot more emotion out there,” Flynn said.

The Cyclones ran the ball 45 times in the game, compared to 18 pass attempts for Flynn. Northern Iowa kept its linebackers and safeties near the line of scrimmage throughout, and the ISU running game struggled.

“Our team offense needs to get a lot better, but you’ve got to give a lot of credit to UNI, they played well,” said senior wide receiver Jack Whitver, who scored Iowa State’s first touchdown on a 13-yard catch-and-run in the second quarter.

“[Northern Iowa] just looks like a much, much better football team than the team we played two years ago,” said McCarney. Iowa State beat the Panthers 45-0 in the 2001 season opener.

Flynn was consistently able to scramble out of trouble Saturday, picking up 67 yards on 13 carries.

“He did make some very important plays with his feet tonight,” McCarney said.

After racking up 131 yards on the ground in the first half, Iowa State collected just 38 rushing yards in the second.

“We were very inconsistent overall on offense, but at times, we were close,” McCarney said.

The Cyclones had five plays covering 20 or more yards — 165 of the Cyclones’ 327 yards of total offense.

“We just got ‘big-played’ at times,” Farley said.

The ISU defense held Northern Iowa to 261 net yards.

Iowa State’s first consistent drive began on its own 26-yard line late in the first quarter. Wagner picked up 33 yards on the drive, and Flynn converted twice on third downs, including the scoring play when he found Whitver on a five-yard hitch. Whitver turned inside to elude a defender and dived into the end zone for a 13-yard touchdown to put Iowa State up 10-3.

Misfortune struck the Cyclones late in the second quarter, when UNI defensive end Ryan Arnold tipped a Flynn pass up in the air, where safety Justin Sandy picked it off and ran back to the Iowa State 1-yard line.

Terrance Freeney, who led Northern Iowa in rushing with 60 yards, scored two plays later to tie the game at 10.

Iowa State took the lead for good with 2:22 left in the third quarter. Flynn was 3-for-3 passing on an 81-yard drive, including a perfect 48-yard strike down the middle to senior wide receiver Lane Danielsen to the Northern Iowa 5-yard line.

Flynn ran right on the option and cut into the end zone from three yards out two plays later to score his first touchdown in an ISU uniform.

“You saw some accuracy with [Flynn’s] throws tonight,” McCarney said. “I think you saw some good leadership skills.”

Iowa State’s defense held the Panthers to 261 net yards, but suffered a big loss in the fourth quarter when senior defensive end Tyson Smith went down with an injury to his right leg. He will miss the rest of the season.

Linebackers Brandon Brown and Nik Moser led Iowa State with 13 and 10 tackles, respectively.

Farley said he was proud of his team’s effort, despite coming up a touchdown short.

“We didn’t come down here to play well, we came here to win,” he said. “And we played toe-to-toe with a Big 12 three-time bowl team for four quarters.”