AMES — Entering Saturday’s matchup against Texas Tech, No. 11 Iowa State had the opportunity to have its best start in school history by potentially going 8-0.

But after multiple missed opportunities and penalties, the Cyclones fell short of that historic mark and effectively ended their perfect season, as Iowa State fell 23-22 to Texas Tech Saturday for its first loss of the season.

Inconsistencies lead to demise for the Cyclones

One of the biggest problems that Iowa State dealt with in its loss to Texas Tech was the many inconsistencies throughout the game.

Whether it came from the missed opportunities on offense or the plethora of penalties that the team had faced, the Cyclones had dug themselves a deep hole that they were unable to climb out of Saturday.

To start, there were missed opportunities from the offense.

In its first drive of the game, Iowa State’s offense walked onto the field knowing they were already down by a touchdown after Texas Tech’s offense marched the field to immediately take the lead on the opening drive.

While it started to look like the Cyclones would answer that score with a touchdown of their own, a couple of incompletions from redshirt sophomore quarterback Rocco Becht led to a 49-yard field goal from redshirt freshman kicker Kyle Konrardy.

After the Iowa State defense held the Red Raiders to a field goal, that gave way to the Cyclones offense to once again find a way to tie the game early on.

But the second drive from the Iowa State offense would be the beginning of the many inconsistencies they occurred in the game, as the Cyclones would incur their first two penalties of the game from false starts.

These penalties would eventually lead Iowa State to fail on a fourth down conversion that gave Texas Tech the ability to increase its lead over the Cyclones.

While that didn’t result until later in the game, it still didn’t help that Iowa State couldn’t convert when it needed to most.

Throughout the rest of the game, the Cyclones offense went back and forth from scoring points to either turning the ball over or would end up punting the ball back to the Red Raiders offense.

“We had chances, offensively, to gain momentum but we didn’t,” head coach Matt Campbell said. “It’s my responsibility to get us into a great rhythm and I couldn’t get that done.”

That now leads into the penalties Iowa State occurred in this game.

In total, the Cyclones would have eight penalties called against them which is a season high. Of those eight penalties, six would be called on the offense and two against the defense.

But perhaps the biggest penalty of the game that could’ve officially shifted the momentum in favor of Iowa State came in the third quarter.

After the Cyclones had failed to increase their 13-10 lead while being in Texas Tech territory, they punted the ball to the Red Raiders, which in turn gave them an opportunity to take the lead back from Iowa State.

But on the fifth play of that drive, Morton ended up throwing an interception to defensive back Jontez Williams that would’ve given the Cyclones prime field position to increase their lead.

However, that play would be negated thanks to an illegal hands to the face penalty against defensive end Tyler Onyedim. From there, Texas Tech would go down the field to retake a 17-13 lead that would eventually lead to the Red Raiders’ big win.

“We’re going to have to have to get it corrected [penalties] because that put us in a really tough spot,” Campbell said.

Second quarter defense dominates Texas Tech

While it may look all doom and gloom for Iowa State after this game, there’s still positives, including the defensive performance in the second quarter.

After giving up 10 points in the first quarter, it looked like the Cyclone defense would continue to struggle against the Red Raiders’ powerful offense.

But that was not the case, as Iowa State’s defense played arguably the best quarter they’ve played in this season by shutting out Texas Tech and allowing only 22 yards over the course of five drives.

Red Raider quarterback Behren Morton came into this game playing exceptionally well, as he had thrown for over 2,000 yards with a 17-3 touchdown to interception ratio.

However, despite the win, Morton’s second quarter against Iowa State was one of the worst quarters he had, as he struggled to find ways to move the ball past this stout Cyclones defense.

In that second quarter, Morton would throw two interceptions, get sacked three times with one of the sacks resulting in a fumble that would roll out of bounds.

One of the interceptions was caught by defensive back Darien Porter, who got his third interception of the season after collecting two of them against Iowa’s Cade McNamara.

The other interception would come from senior defensive back Myles Purchase, who got his first interception of not just the season, but of his four-year college career.

“I played good most of the game, but at the end of the game I had to play better,” Purchase said.

The three sacks were from defensive lineman J.R. Singleton, who got his fourth sack of the season, defensive end Joey Petersen, his second of the season and freshman defensive back Marcus Neal, who got his first sack while stripping Morton of the ball in the process.

Even with the strong second quarter, the Iowa State defense struggled to get anymore turnovers against the Texas Tech offense, as they would end up giving up the touchdown to Red Raider running back Tahj Brooks that effectively ended the game for the Cyclones.

Perfect season ends, hope not lost

Although the perfect season that Iowa State was having ended Saturday to Texas Tech at home on homecoming, the hope is not lost for this team that is looking to still achieve bigger aspirations.

While the loss will most likely drop the Cyclones in the AP polls and in the conference, the hopes of making the Big 12 Championship game and the College Football Playoff are not dead just yet.

Despite the one loss, Iowa State still has seven wins to its name and can still make a push to these two big games in December.

The confidence is not lost from the players, as they look to flush out this loss Saturday night and move forward towards those bigger aspirations.

“I could care less if we go undefeated, I just want to go win a Big 12 Championship,” Becht said.

The Cyclones have four games remaining on their schedule, as they now look ahead to traveling to Kansas City to take on an underwhelming Kansas team in a potential bounce back game to get back into the win column.

“Everything is still in front of us,” Petersen said. “It’s going to be a hard road and has been a hard road so we just gotta move forward.”