After being dismantled by the Oklahoma Sooners last Saturday, the 17th-ranked ISU football team will look to rebound this week when it travels to Austin, Texas to face the eighth-ranked Texas Longhorns.

The Cyclones (6-2, 3-1 Big 12) will face their second consecutive top 10 opponent when they meet Texas (6-1, 2-1). ISU head football coach Dan McCarney was disappointed with his team’s performance at Norman, but he knows that it was only one game.

“It’s a hard loss for us, obviously,” McCarney said. “I just remind them that we’re not 2-6, we’re 6-2, and we’ve still done a lot of good things this year.”

McCarney also said the Cyclones can’t dwell on last week with the opponent they face this weekend.

“We can’t sit around and keep worrying about the Oklahoma game. It’s all done and behind us,” he said. “Texas is a tremendous football team. We’re really going to have our hands full, and hopefully we can bounce back and play much better football this Saturday.”

The Longhorns responded to their own loss to Oklahoma the previous week by defeating Kansas State 17-14 on Saturday.

Texas head football coach Mack Brown has been impressed with the Cyclones this season, regardless of their performance against the Sooners.

“Iowa State has had a great year,” Brown said. “They ran into a buzzsaw on Saturday, but Oklahoma is a great team.”

Brown expects a tough game with the Cyclones, and he knows that McCarney will have them ready. “They’ll bounce back because [McCarney] is as tough and as strong and aggressive a personality as any coach in the country right now,” he said. “I give [him] credit for turning that program around and making it one of the best in the country.”

Texas features a defense that is allowing only 13.7 points per game, good for fifth in the nation.

Their offense is led by senior quarterback Chris Simms, averaging 214 yards per game, and sophomore running back Cedric Benson, who is third in rushing in the Big 12 with 105 yards per game.

Iowa State continues their gruesome second-half schedule of road games, but McCarney is not looking for any sympathy.

“If you got a good football team — which I thought we did, I think we do, I believe we do — then you enjoy going on the road in those atmospheres where it’s you against the world,” he said. “Your focus has to be tremendous when you go in environments like that, but that’s part of the challenge as a coach or a player. It’s a tough battle, but we’re not waiting for any sympathy cards, and we’re not getting any.”

Texas is well aware of what they have to do to beat Iowa State — contain quarterback Seneca Wallace — and after the Oklahoma game, they have seen how it can be done.

McCarney is aware of this, and knows that everyone else will be studying the tape as well.

“Everybody knows he’s the key to our offense, and now Oklahoma’s done just a fantastic job of shutting him down and shutting our offense down, and there hasn’t been a lot of that this year,” he said. “It’s a tremendous challenge, but one that we’re looking forward to, and we’re hoping that we can play a lot better football this week.”

After his performance against Oklahoma, finishing with 43 passing yards and three interceptions, many feel Wallace may have lost his chance at the Heisman, but Brown has seen this kind of thing before — when he coached a Heisman winner, current Miami Dolphin running back Ricky Williams.

“I remember they threw Ricky out of the Heisman a couple of times in his senior year,” Brown said. “[Wallace] will be right back in the Heisman race before the season’s over. He’s that good.”

McCarney also knows Wallace won’t be affected by his performance against Oklahoma. “He didn’t play well, but neither did anybody else on our offense,” McCarney said. “He’s a fabulous young man and he’s a great competitor.”