They outplayed Iowa in the second half and didn’t make one coaching gaffe after the next like Iowa did.
As bad as clock management was at the end of the first half and the play calling at the goal line, and even as bad of a decision as it was to go for two halfway through the 3rd quarter, the worst decision of all was after getting the ball back in your opponent’s territory after a muffed punt and having a chance to put the game out of reach, the first play from scrimmage is a designed rollout in which a quarterback with a weak arm has to throw back across his body to the other side of the field to a completely blanketed TE, giving Iowa State a gift of an INT that absolutely turned the momentum of the game.
So, yeah, I would say Iowa deserved to lose and Iowa State deserved to win. They made the plays they needed to at the end of the game and capitalized on Iowa’s mistakes. Amazingly, Iowa stayed in their base defense, even on the final Iowa State drive, and left the deep third of the field completely wide open for Iowa State to throw a pass down the sideline with tons of green in front of the receiver to pile up a lot of YAC, putting them in field goal range. I mean, JFC, you know Iowa State has no timeouts to work with, you would think if you were halfway smart you would have the sidelines blanketed and force every throw underneath over the middle.
