AMES — With all due respect to Ben Franklin, death and taxes might have a third partner in inevitability: the Iowa defense scoring points.
Defensive back Sebastian Castro intercepted an errant Rocco Becht throw in the second quarter and took it 30 yards for a touchdown, pushing Iowa's lead to 17-0 in a game the Hawkeyes won 20-13.
On the fateful play, DE Joe Evans came around on a stunt to pressure Becht, and Castro swooped in front of the freshman quarterback's desperation pass to the flat, waltzing into the end zone with no Cyclones within reach.
"They came out in an empty formation and they motioned a guy over, so that's going to change my responsibility, what I'm meant to look at," Castro said. "So that just brought my eyes to my [assignment], and I just looked at it the whole way in."
Castro's score marks an incredible 16-straight seasons (and counting) in which the Hawkeyes had scored on a pick-six, dating back to 2008 when Amari Spievey picked off an Adam Weber throw in the Hawkeyes' iconic 55-0 victory at the Metrodome.
"That's something we take pride in, taking the ball away," Cooper DeJean said after the win. "And when we take the ball away we want to score."
It's not quite as simple as taking pride, obviously — but it's also not that complex.
"Part of it's the way we play defense — our defensive guys did a great job," Ferentz said. "A lot of zone coverage, so we've got our eyes on the ball a lot. But a guy like Castro, a year ago I don't think he could have made that play; here we are a year later, where he makes a great play."
The play came on the heels of a pick by ISU DB Jeremiah Cooper, on a no-call that Iowa quarterback Cade McNamara would charitably describe as "questionable" after the game.
"But then our defense got a pick on the next [pass], so maybe 'Ball Don't Lie,'" McNamara said with a laugh.
Regardless of whether karma (or whatever the college football equivalent would be, anyway) played a role in Castro's score, it ended up being a pivotal moment in the game. Iowa was nursing a 10-0 lead, and the crowd was back in the game after the Cooper takeaway. Iowa State had already sustained a long drive on offense, and if the game had gotten back to one possession in the first half, there's no telling what direction the game might have gone.
Instead, the ball — and ultimately the game — went right into the defense's hands.
"It felt like practice, everything was slowed down," Castro said. "I saw the ball coming in real slow, caught it, and bring it home. Great feeling to do that for our team, and something I'm not going to forget."
Iowa State made a late push in the fourth quarter, scoring a late touchdown to push the game back to 20-13 then getting the ball back for one last gasp with under two minutes left.
Castro and the Iowa defense were happy for one last shot to win the game.
"I couldn't have asked for a better ending," Castro said. "For us to be on the field in that moment — we want to be in that situation; we want to take them down, finish the job. The fact that we did that is a great feeling, to do it with these guys."
