The Texas Longhorns went on the road to Ames on Thursday and took down the Iowa State Cyclones to get to 2-2 on the year.
For the ESPN Thursday night matchup this week, we got a Big 12 Conference bout pitting Tom Herman and the Texas Longhorns hitting the road to Jack Trice Stadium in Ames, Iowa to take on the Iowa State Cyclones. Texas was coming off a 12-day layoff since the harsh overtime loss to the USC Trojans back on Sept. 16 inside the Coliseum, while the Cyclones were looking to make life a living hell for the Longhorns once again, as the last time Texas made the trip to Ames, it ended in a 24-0 shutout loss.
There would be no humiliation in Ames this time, though, as Herman and his Texas team pushed their record to 2-2 on the season and earned their first conference win, while Iowa State dropped to 2-2 with the loss and are now 0-1 in Big 12 play.
Takeaways
1. Give the ball to David Montgomery, Cyclones
When you take a peek at the boxscore for this game, it will show you that the Texas run defense on Thursday night was an absolute machine, holding Iowa State to 10 total yards rushing. It’s easy to look at that and come away with the belief that the Longhorns just straight up suffocated the Cyclones up front.
While the Texas front wasn’t terrible by any means — they did sack Iowa State quarterback Jacob Park four times, after all — that’s a tad deceiving simply due to the fact that Iowa State all of a sudden decided that they shouldn’t give David Montgomery the ball. In the last two outings for the Cyclones, Montgomery was handed the ball a total of 42 times for 239 yards. Coming into the game he was averaging 5.7 yards per carry, clearly a heavy focal point of Matt Campbell’s offense.
Thursday night against Texas? 9 carries, 34 yards. Nine. Simply put, if Iowa State wants to start taking down the bigger competition, they have to create a strong presence in the ground game and they failed miserably at that in the loss to Texas by not feeding Montgomery; that simply can’t happen.
2. Texas didn’t get trapped in Ames
This was a bigger win for Texas than some may give it credit for. It really is no joke; Jack Trice Stadium in Ames, Iowa has been home to heartbreak a few times for some teams that were supposed to walk in there can come away with the win, only to get sucked up by the Cyclones.
That didn’t happen to the Longhorns Thursday night, although many were ready for that to be the case. Given some of their early-season struggles as the Tom Herman era gets underway, they were able to suppress the pressure for the most part, take advantages of the opportunities and leaves Ames with the W.
With the fourth quarter about to get underway Iowa State cut the lead to 14-7 following a Matthew Eaton touchdown reception and you got the feeling the momentum was taking a major swing, and the Longhorns probably believed that to some degree as well. But they were able to hold off Iowa State the rest of the way to gift Herman his first Big 12 win as the head coach in Austin.
3. A nice confidence win, because the upcoming stretch is brutal
It’s actually a good thing that Texas was able to get the first conference win of 2017 Thursday night against Iowa State because, quite frankly, there’s a chance they might not get another one for a while here.
The upcoming stretch for Herman and the Longhorns is a pretty brutal one. While two of the next three games are at home in Austin, they’re against Kansas State and Oklahoma State. Sandwiched right in the middle of those bouts is the annual Red River Rivalry game in the Cotton Bowl with the Oklahoma Sooners. Their next really solid chance for a Big 12 win might be Oct. 28 on the road against Baylor, but after what we saw last weekend when the Bears welcomed in Oklahoma, that might not be as much of a guarantee as some people think. Then immediately after Baylor, they go on the road to take on TCU, a squad we recently learned might actually be the class of the conference.
But, who knows? Maybe the confidence from this win in Ames on Thursday night could propel Texas to make some crazy things happen during the upcoming stretch that awaits them and we can really see some Big 12 chaos take place.