After trailing by a touchdown early last week at West Virginia, Iowa State surged to its sixth straight win to start the season.
On Saturday, the No. 9 Cyclones (6-0, 3-0 Big 12) will host UCF (3-3, 1-2) in Ames, Iowa, in an effort to remain unbeaten and at the top of the Big 12 Conference.
Iowa State started slowly against the Mountaineers, but Carson Hansen led the Cyclones to a 28-16 victory with 96 yards rushing and three touchdowns.
Hansen’s solid game doesn’t guarantee the running back will start against UCF because Iowa State has three backs with at least 245 rushing yards this season. It’s a position battle between Hansen (307 yards), Abu Sama III (248) and the team’s leading rusher, Jaylon Jackson (314).
“That’s the great thing about football practice, right? You go to practice, and when you practice and play good, then you get to play in the game,” Cyclones coach Matt Campbell said. “We’ve got three guys that are really good football players, and they keep playing really good football, and I think we’re as blessed as anybody in college football right now to have guys that are playing great.”
For Saturday’s game, Campbell said he is most concerned with the Knights’ running game. UCF coach Gus Malzahn relies on RJ Harvey, who leads the Big 12 in rushing touchdowns (nine) and is third in rushing yards (694).
Harvey is part of a diverse ground attack between the running back and quarterback position for UCF, with both potential starting quarterbacks rushing for over 175 yards each.
“I think when you have that, and you have the ability to create multiple ball carriers with every possession, you’ve got the ability to attack multiple gaps with what they do, it’s a real challenge,” Campbell said.
The issue for the Knights is which quarterback will start on Saturday.
After leading the Knights to a three-game winning streak to begin the season, senior KJ Jefferson lost two games as a starter and was benched in favor of sophomore Jacurri Brown. In a 19-13 loss to Cincinnati, Brown had his first start of the year, going 13-for-20 for 207 yards and one touchdown and rushing for 84 yards.
“All I can tell you now is he’s the first to take snaps tomorrow in practice,” Malzahn said Monday about Brown. “With Brown as our quarterback, you can see we had a little bit more life in our offense. We put the ball vertically down the field. I think he did some good things for his first rodeo.”
In the loss to the Bearcats, UCF struggled to finish drives, scoring one touchdown on its 10 possessions. Now the Knights will try to score against the top-scoring defense in the Big 12, with Iowa State allowing an average of only 11 points per game.
Iowa State needs a win Saturday to keep up with Texas Tech and BYU at the top of the Big 12, with each team entering the weekend at 3-0. Overall, the Cyclones haven’t started a season 6-0 since 1938.
