After enjoying a rare taste of home cooking this past weekend, the ISU football team heads back out on the road against yet another top 25 team this Saturday.

The 21st-ranked Cyclones (7-3, 4-2 Big 12) will travel to Manhattan, Kan., to do battle with the 12th-ranked Kansas State Wildcats.

Kansas State (7-2, 3-2) is fresh off a 64-0 dismantling of in-state rival Kansas. The win featured a four-touchdown performance by junior quarterback Ell Roberson.

Roberson ran for three scores and threw for another, all in the first half against the Jayhawks.

Sophomore running back Darren Sproles led the nation’s sixth-best rushing offense with 110 yards and two touchdowns for the Wildcats.

Despite what Kansas State does on offense, their defense has been creating bigger problems for opponents this season.

K-State leads the nation in scoring defense, giving up just 11.9 points per game. They are especially stingy against the run, giving up only four rushing touchdowns all season, and allowing just 72.7 yards per game.

ISU head football coach Dan McCarney has great respect for the Wildcat defense.

“They play with great effort all the time,” McCarney said. “They come to play in a bad mood every Saturday. They don’t like giving up first downs, much less points.”

McCarney knows what his team is up against when they face his former co-worker, KSU head coach Bill Snyder.

“We have this unbelievable challenge with Kansas State,” he said. “They’ve put an outstanding team on the field with tremendous talent. They believe in what [Snyder] does.”

McCarney and Snyder were coaches together at the University of Iowa. McCarney was the defensive line coach from 1977 to 1989 and Snyder was the offensive coordinator from 1979 to 1988.

Despite the performance of his team this season, Snyder is concerned with the Cyclones more than ever.

“Iowa State has proven themselves to be a real factor in this conference, which I think we knew at the outset of the season,” he said. “They have an amazing quarterback in Seneca Wallace.”

Although Snyder has a lot of praise for Wallace, he said Iowa State is by no means a one-man show.

“Wallace is not the only quality player that they have. They have a lot of fine young players on both sides of the ball, and some very good specialists,” he said. “It’s quite obvious we will have more than our hands full against Iowa State.”

Iowa State has not had much success against Kansas State recently. Last season, the Wildcats came to Ames and dismantled the Cyclones, 42-3.

McCarney hopes to avoid another big loss.

“A lot of the games have been ugly. It’s very similar to the Iowa State-Nebraska series since I’ve been here, and it’s not going to get any easier this year,” he said.

Snyder is impressed with the Cyclones, and with the turnaround orchestrated by McCarney and his staff.

“The marvelous job that Dan McCarney and his people have done has been well-chronicled and well-recognized throughout the course of the year.

“We certainly echo that. It’s never been in doubt the fact that he’d bring great success to that program.”