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Three Things to Know about the Iowa State Cyclones: A Top 25 Team – No Longer a Trap Game

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6 years ago

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This week the Pokes cruise up I-35 through Big Ten country, landing in Ames, Iowa for a rare top 25 matchup between the No. 21 Iowa State Cyclones and the Payne County Pokes.

Side note: did anybody else get more hosed by realignment than Iowa State? They lost two of their three conference mates within five hours drive. Woof.

Stifling Defense

I don’t know if they slip some strong ethanol (corn-based fuel) into opponent’s gas tanks or what, but Iowa State is stagnating opposing offenses at alarming rates this season.

They held a TCU offense averaging 35.8 points per game to zero offensive points (a long kick return their only points) and shut out West Virginia in the second half, to see a rally come just shy of sending them home with five wins.

The attention-getter on that front is Gundy’s pen pal, Joel Lanning – a Donovan Woodsian QB/LB that plays like the gritty ISU linebackers of old with a nose for the ball but flips back to his quarterback roots in short-yardage situations.

Now while he makes some plays in the run game, feel free to go at him over the middle with the speedier receivers. Maybe go back to this one, Mikey Y.

Linebacker Marcel Spears, Jr. is known to get his paws on the ball in key situations, with a pick-6 against Tech and a game-saving interception against TCU.

With that being said, the three-down line fronts and the opportunistic linebackers aren’t necessarily what strikes fear, it’s one of the league’s best secondaries giving up a league-low 199.3 yards passing in conference play.

Allowing roughly two scores a game in Big 12 play (14.7), Iowa State has intercepted 11 passes on the season and poses similar challenges as a TCU team hell-bent on keeping you held down to their scoring level.

Maybe it’s something else involving corn that Iowa State is slipping to opponents…

Triplets!

Iowa State has stumbled into a legitimate Big 12 offense.

The surprise story here is senior quarterback Kyle Kempt, who feels an awful lot like a mildly successful Kurt Warner of the CFB world. After making his first start against Oklahoma nearly a month ago, Kempt has more Big 12 wins than any ISU quarterback since 2010.

Growing up in Oregon, his travels through college football make Baker Mayfield – or Luke Del Rio – look like a hermit.

Kyle bounced from Oregon State to Hutchinson Community College in Kansas to Cincinnati to here. Three years out of high school, he hadn’t taken a college snap in a game. [CBS Sports]

After a 343-yard, three touchdown game against OU, he’s done a bit of game managing to the tune of 221.6 yards per game. He’s completely capable of making some solid throws but likely below Tech’s Nic Shimonek and WVU’s Will Grier on the league totem pole.

Success for Kempt comes more like this where he hits guys on short routes, particularly stud back David Montgomery as a relief valve.

Likely the Cyclones best player, sophomore running back David Montgomery is the game breaker. Second only to Justice Hill in rushing yards per game in league play, the multi-purpose back is hard to bring down any way you dice it.

Montgomery is second in Big 12 rushing and leads the nation, according to Iowa State, having eluded 70 tackles. [CBS Sports]

It’s hard to know who to compare Montgomery to but one generous comp has been Kansas City Chiefs dynamo Kareem Hunt. What’s objectively true is that he’s about the same height as Justice Hill (5’11”) but 30 pounds heavier (220 pounds).

It’ll be interesting to see how he matches up with smaller Cowboy linebackers like Bundage (205 pounds) and Justin Phillips (215 pounds).

Last is senior Allen Lazard, AKA Iowa State’s Marcell Ateman. At 6’5″ and 222 pounds, Lazard is the goal-line fade target and the go-to guy when you’ve gotta have the yards.

Playing his last game in the cardinal and gold on Saturday, Lazard will own most meaningful receiver stats as an all-timer in Ames – where Dez’s and Blackmon’s don’t grow on trees mind you.

Side note: congratulations on a heck of a career for Lazard, the all-everything, four-star receiver that shunned Notre Dame and others to play for the in-state Cyclones.

Cowboy Nation will forever be indebted to you for this beauty at Memorial Stadium.

(Hardly Ever) Been There, Done That

When you think about Iowa State football, you think of a relentless legion of 60,000 fans that will show up regardless of the product. An earnest group ready to cheer for Kansas State-lite: farm boys and Hoosiers that slipped through the cracks of the Big Ten powers.

After going 3-9 three times and 2-10 once over the last four years, it’s a new day in the cornfield where second-year coach Matt Campbell had the Cyclones bowl-eligible before Halloween.

A four-game winning streak was ended last week in Morgantown and ISU is free of the pressures of a win-streak as they’re now playing with house money.

The most important thing for the Cyclones is that they’re playing meaningful football this late in the season.

“It’s where you want to be in college football,” Campbell said. “You want to be in it, in November. If someone were to ask me that a year and a half ago, I don’t know if I would have said this is where we’d be. But that’s a great credit to these kids.” [Des Moines Register]

Win out and you punch a ticket to the conference title game. But nobody saw this coming and nobody will fault you for sliding into the clubhouse after losing three out of West Virginia, OSU, Baylor and K-State.

It’s obvious that there’s a good thing going up there but just a heads up Cyclone Nation: it’s more Murphy’s Law than Sooner Magic on the way up.

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