Iowa State 24, Baylor 10: Bears Fall In Ames, Drop To 0-2 In Big 12 Play

The Baylor Bears (3-3, 0-2) dropped a disappointing 24-10 loss to the Iowa State Cyclones (4-3, 1-2) on Saturday in Ames.

Baylor’s latest setback drops the Bears to 0-2 in the Big 12 with a Homecoming match-up against Oklahoma State looming.

“I’m as disappointed as disappointed can be without jumping into the range of that station,” Baylor head coach Art Briles said following the loss. “There’s two ways to look at it. What we can’t do is let it beat us up. What we have to do is fight it out and rally. That’s what we do as athletes, a football program and a coach.”

Briles also told the media he would be the one to shoulder the Bears’ poor performance against Iowa State.

“I’ll take the credit for us not winning and the way we played,” he said. “There’s no excuse for some of the things that happened on the field tonight. It’s my responsibility. I know our players will respond.”

For the Baylor football team, including last week’s starting senior quarterback Blake Szymanski, that means bouncing back almost immediately after last week’s defeat.

“I didn’t think I played very well,” Szymanski said on Saturday. “When I needed to make plays, I didn’t come through with the big plays. The defense played well enough to win and we just never got a drive going.”

According to Szymanski, penalties and a true lack of focus hurt the Bears against the Cyclones.

“We hurt ourselves with penalties and just didn’t get it done,” Szymanski said. “We never created any momentum. Taking the crowd away for an away game is a big part of it. We have got to play better between the ears. Mentally we didn’t do very well offensively. We will be working it out.”

Senior linebacker Joe Pawelek echoed his teammate's and coach's feelings.

“All 70 guys that we brought today are frustrated, mad, disappointed,” Pawelek said. “I think it's a situation of where do we go from here. I think that later in the game, we were struggling with reading the quarterback power, getting people in the gaps and fulfilling their responsibilities. I can’t give you a definite answer, but it comes back to us not getting third-down conversions.”

Iowa State, meanwhile, was 9-of-11 in the first half on third-down conversions and 12-of-18 in the second half.

“No loss is easy,” Baylor senior safety Jordan Lake said. “At the beginning of the year, we looked at this game and thought we should win. It hurts that we let it get away from us like that. [The Cyclones] have gotten better in a year. You can see that they are a much improved team with an improved system and we just didn’t defend it well enough.”

Briles also mentioned the turnaround of the Iowa State program, making sure to point out that the Cyclones are a good football team despite the disappointment in losing the game.

“[Iowa State] is a good football team and that’s what people need to understand,” Briles said. “Iowa beat them decisively, but that’s it. That’s an in-state rival and anything can happen. They beat Army and they are a pretty good football team and handled Kent State at their place. They’ve had two real tough losses to start conference play.”

Briles, though, feels his Bears didn’t step up when they needed to against the Cyclones on the road in a very tough conference.

“We understood that they are a really good team,” Briles said. “We didn’t take control early in the football game. We had a chance to seize it but it came back to bite us. We let them get away from us.”

The result for Baylor was a 24-10 loss to Iowa State. They look to bounce back when they host the Oklahoma State Cowboys this weekend for Homecoming at Floyd Casey Stadium.

Denton Ramsey may be reached via email at [e-mail]

[PHOTO CREDIT: David Fuller/LSCSN.com]