Saturday, the Iowa State Cylcones delivered a major upset to their opponent, the No.3 Oklahoma Sooners with a victory of 38-31, a score that didn’t reach its final form until the match was left with 2 minutes and 19 seconds on the clock.
Until Saturday, Oklahoma was running with a 14-game winning streak, the best record in the nation at the time, and held a winning streak of 18 games against Iowa State, a record dating back to 1990.
In a match in which the Cyclones were missing their star quarterback, they managed to pull out their second victory over Oklahoma since 1961.
“There’s been a lot of adversity at Iowa State for a long time, and there been a cloud around us,” said Coach Matt Campbell. “I think our kids said, ‘I’m sick of it, and we’re going to keep grinding, keep swinging and getting better one day at a time.’ So at the end of it, here we are.”
As quarterback Jacob Park stepped away from the field for undisclosed personal medical reasons, Kyle Kempt, a senior who threw only two passes in his career before Saturday passed 343 yards and threw for three touchdowns. This included the 25-yard pass to Allen Lazard that put Iowa State ahead of the Sooners by the game’s end. The last time Iowa State pulled a win over a top-25 program was back in 2012 against Texas Christian. Since then, they’ve lost the last 20 games against ranked opponents. This also marked Iowa State’s first win on the road over a top-five team.
“We should have been better that that today,” said Mike Stoops, Oklahoma’s defensive coordinator. “Some of the old scars kind of repeated themselves today. Our execution as a whole was not good enough. That falls on us as coaches. We haven’t played well the last couple of weeks. We are just not making enough plays, and if you do that in this league you’re going to come out on the short end of the stick.”
Per usual, Twitter delivered on the day's most poignant responses. Check out the app's top reactions to Saturday’s upset below.
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