AMES- It’s a tale as old as time.

Iowa State was able to beat the No. 8 team in the nation Saturday, adding another memorable upset victory to the history books. A big reason why?

The Cyclones’ second-half defense that has reared its head so many times already this season came up big once again.

Once again, in Saturday’s game against the Cowboys, the Cyclone defense stepped up their play in a big way in the second half. They gave up just seven points and stuffed their opponent on fourth and two with just over a minute to go to give them the win.

Matt Campbell has seen his defense step up in the last 30 minutes on multiple occasions, and he knows he can count on his best players on defense to make those plays in the second half.

“I’ve said it enough, if we want to win football games here our ‘A’ players have to play ‘A’ football and some of the hugest moments today our ‘A’ players made ‘A’ plays,” Campbell said regarding the second half on defense.

The ‘A’ players he was referring to in this specific instance were redshirt junior Will McDonald and redshirt sophomore Isheem Young.

In the case of McDonald, it was his back-to-back sacks late in the fourth quarter that forced a Cowboy punt.

You often see McDonald come through late in games after being held quiet early on. He thinks the reason he was able to break-through was because Oklahoma State got complacent.

“They were chipping me most of the first and second quarters, the third quarter they were chipping me a little bit and in the fourth I think they kind of just forgot about me,” McDonald said. “I think it’s because they figured I just wasn’t getting back there… it just gave me a better chance to get back to the quarterback.”

McDonald’s momentum-changing plays have been a theme all season long for the Cyclones, but him getting to the quarterback could be considered routine since he first started playing in 2018.

With his two sacks Saturday, he moves closer to breaking Jaquan Bailey’s sack record. McDonald is now just a half sack away from tying and a full sack from breaking Bailey’s record. He’s aware of what it means, but credits his former teammate for getting him there.

“[Jaquan] basically taught me everything when I came here,” McDonald said. “I give all the credit to him.”

Elsewhere on the defense, Isheem Young was the one who delivered the final blow to the Cowboys, and it came after a play in the first half that his head coach described as a “hair off.”

“I think back to Isheem and the touchdown before half, I thought ‘man, he could easily go in the tank’ and it was a play where, man, he was a hair off and their guy was a hair on and you come back to the fourth quarter and in some of the biggest moments, he’s making the critical plays,” Campbell said.

The play Campbell was referring to occurred with 59 seconds remaining in the second quarter. Spencer Sanders threw a 42-yard score to his receiver, Brennan Presley with Isheem Young in coverage. 

Going forward in the game to about the same time remaining in the second half as there was in the first before the touchdown, and it was Young again tasked with making (or not making) a play, and he wasn’t going to be fooled twice.

“I knew I had to come up and trigger… [Kym-Mani] King held him up and I just finished him off,” Young said regarding the last play of that final defensive series. “When I landed I could see that I was on the fourth down marker so I knew he was short.”

Isheem Young rarely makes a subtle, routine hit. He’s always going for the big hits, and his teammate Enyi Uwazurike knows what he brings to the team with those monstrous hits.

“I don’t know how he does it,” Uwazurike said about Young’s big hits. “Even if I’m not seeing the tackle, I hear it and know ‘okay that was Isheem'”.

Uwazurike also added that Young is like a “little stick of dynamite”, and having someone like that in the backfield makes him feel “safe”.

The big plays in the second half certainly weren’t limited to just the two aforementioned individuals, but no two players factored in more to the outcome of the game than McDonald and Young, at least on the defensive side.

Whether it’s individual players making big plays, or the entire defense stepping up when it mattered most against the Oklahoma State offense, Campbell’s defensive unit continues to play a big part in Iowa State’s now 5-2 record as they enter the home stretch of Big 12 play.