Unbelievable, improbable, crazy….you could use all those terms to describe the crazy finish at Bill Snyder Family Stadium Saturday afternoon.
With Iowa State ahead 35-28 with less than one and a half minutes to play, and in possession of the football Iowa State turned the ball over to Kansas State on a fumble at the Wildcat 45-yard line. Aided by a 42 yard pass play that put them in good scoring position, Kansas State got the game-tying touchdown on a five-yard run by Charles Jones with :42 seconds remaining.
And then it got even stranger. Iowa State fumbled on their ensuing possession and the Wildcats recovered. After running one play to put the ball in the middle of the field at the Cyclone 25-yard line, K-State kicker Jack Cantele came on the field, waited through two timeouts called by Iowa State, and then booted a 42-yard field goal to lift the Wildcats to a 38-35 win. Kansas State had ralled from a 35-14 halftime deficit.
Cantele commented on the magnitude of the win, which snapped a six-game losing streak and keeps K-State’s bowl hopes alive. “It keeps us in it. We’re going to celebrate this one for a little bit, but we know that we’ve still got two tough games left, and it’s by no means a given that we’re going to win both of them or either them. We really need to put this behind us as soon as possible and worry about the ultimate goal.
Bill Snyder says his team celebrated this victory. “They enjoyed the daylights out of it. I told them in the locker room that I’ve been here a couple hundred years and I have never seen our locker room….no offense to anybody that we play, but under the circumstances…lot of times act we always say act like you’ve been there before. We didn’t act like we’d been there, but they needed that, so it was good. They were excited about it.”
The win pushes the Wildcats to 4-6 on the season, and is their first victory in Big 12 Conference play in seven tries this season. Iowa State fell to 3-8 overall and 2-6 in the conference.
Kansas State plays at Kansas next Saturday, and hosts West Virginia December 5.
