Meaningful November games take a different definition for Iowa State football this year
AMES – Back in Matt Campbell’s first season at Iowa State in 2016, after the Cyclones snapped a five-game losing streak in mid-November with a win over Kansas, the coach was selling his vision.
“At some point, we’ll be in this position in November,’” Campbell said he told his team when relaying the story in 2018, “where these games actually count as more of just a ‘Hey, it’s a great win, let’s move forward.’”
And Iowa State spent the next five years doing exactly that, advancing to a program-record five-straight bowl games while being consistently in the hunt in the season’s final month to make the Big 12 Championship Game. They actually advanced to that title bout in 2020, a first-ever for the school.
This season, though, a five-game losing streak to start Big 12 play has put the Cyclones nowhere near the race for a conference crown and has made their bowl chances infinitesimal.
The Cyclones are certainly not back in the same spot they were as a program in 2016, but as they host West Virginia on Saturday (2:30 p.m.; ESPN+) they are back playing with less tangible goals and certainly smaller stakes as the season's final month begins.
“I think this team still has a ton to play for,” Campbell said Tuesday. “Obviously for us, the most meaningful game is the opportunity to become the best (version of ourselves).
“As long as there are games on the schedule and there’s still time left to really chase what it’s got the ability to become, there’s a great sense of urgency around our offices and certainly in our meeting rooms, which is exciting to me as the head football coach.”
Technically, Iowa State can still finish the season above .500 and make a bowl game, but it would require winning three of their final four games, which includes a pair of top-20 road tilts. For a team that has yet to win a Big 12 game and has an offense that has failed to score more than one touchdown in 60 percent of those contests, though, the practicality of such a finish is minute.
That leaves playing for pride and improvement as perhaps the most reasonable markers to meet.
“The one thing you can say about our football team this year is so far we’ve been an inch short,” Campbell said. “But you’ve never seen our team bag it. You’ve never seen our kids quit. Our kids are playing hard for each other.
“The way this team continues to play the way it does and why there’s so much optimism in my mind through our second floor and coaching office is we’ve got this great veteran leadership that continues to lead from the front and not from the back.”
For Dimitri Stanley, that optimism stands out. The wide receiver endured three losing seasons at Colorado before transferring to Iowa State.
“It’s a lot more positive (at Iowa State),” Stanley said. “Here, just a lot of positivity remains, even the day after the game.
“Those are the guys you want around you when things aren’t going the way you want to, guys that can recover quickly and have a short-term memory.”
Ultimately, though, that positivity and any growth that emanates from it needs to produce a victory – and maybe more than one – or it will be difficult to find much to be positive about for a program that has enjoyed its best stretch of football ever over the previous five seasons.
“They know how close they are to really flipping this thing around,” Campbell said. “Obviously the turnaround piece of it is getting a win. It starts with that aspect of it.
“You’ve been right on the verge of it quite honestly in every game you’ve played. In three you were able to do it, and then you’ve been a hair off from it in the last five games. The ability to play the 60 minutes and do the things you need to do to win the game, that’s the starting point and then you build from there.”
Travis Hines covers Iowa State University sports for the Des Moines Register and Ames Tribune. Contact him at thines@amestrib.com or (515) 284-8000. Follow him at @TravisHines21.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Iowa State football enters unfamiliar territory in November 2022
