IOWA CITY — Coming into Saturday's tilt against Iowa State, Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz and the Hawkeyes were 72-2 since 2015 in games where the Hawkeyes led by eight or more points.

Make that 72-3.

Iowa State pulled off a stunning comeback at Kinnick Stadium, with freshman kicker Kyle Konrardy booting a game-winning 54-yard field goal with five seconds left. The 20-19 margin was ISU's first and only lead of the game.

"Typically when you lose a game, there's certain things you can point to that are going to make a big difference," said Ferentz after the game. "Sometimes those things get disguised or masked a little bit when you win games, but that's really the difference."

For a team with such a well-worn formula for closing out wins, the sight of Iowa State roaring back to pull a win from out of nowhere — beating Ferentz at his own game, essentially — was jarring, to say the least.

Here's a look at eight plays — some obvious, some not — that typified Iowa's shocking collapse.

Much will be made about Iowa's inability to consistently score touchdowns in the red zone, and deservedly so. Iowa had a first-and-goal inside the 3-yard line twice in the first half, and came away with field goals on both drives — a damning shortcoming in what would become a one-point loss.

"Having the ball inside the 5, we need to come away with touchdowns," said Ferentz. "It's like walking a guy in the ninth inning in baseball; usually that comes back and gets you."

The Hawkeyes' failures with goal-to-go could populate this article all by themselves, honestly. But their best scoring opportunity on those two drives came right away, as Iowa opened the second quarter with first-and-goal just inside the 2-yard-line. Kamari Moulton took the handoff, then was immediately swarmed by ISU DT Domonique Orange — all 6'4" and 325 pounds of him — and a host of his friends.

It's still fair to expect a Hawkeye touchdown from 2nd-and-goal from the 4, of course. But Iowa didn't trust its offensive line in run blocking for the rest of the series, and Cade McNamara couldn't find room for his receivers in an eight-man Cyclone red zone pass defense.

"They were playing Drop-8 coverage, so they have eight guys in the red zone," McNamara said. "There's eight guys across the entire end zone, and when you're down that low, there's not a lot of room. That's what they did, and it obviously worked for them."

Drew Stevens would kick a 23-yard field goal shortly thereafter to make the Iowa lead 10-0.

Down 13-0 at the half, Iowa State received the second-half kickoff after deferring its choice from the opening coin toss. Even then, though, the Hawkeye defense flummoxed the Cyclone offense on its first drive, forcing a three-and-out and short punt.

Iowa had a 13-point lead and the ball just 42 yards away from the ISU end zone, prime position to put real separation between it and its intrastate rival with under 30 minutes to play.

Alas, a play-action designed to get the ball to Luke Lachey on a wheel route turned into a Cyclone interception, as safety help took away any hope of leading Lachey away from the trailing Cyclone DB Darien Porter.

"We were planning on taking a shot [downfield]," said McNamara. "We were hopefully going to fool them, going one way then throw back the other way, but their corner did a really good job of coming up to the line of scrimmage and then bailing out of it. I made a dumb decision, I should have just thrown it away. I just can't force a ball in that situation."

Iowa State took the opportunity to put together a 75-yard touchdown drive, and all of a sudden a game Iowa had more-or-less dominated was within 13-7.

Despite the Cyclones' offense un-sticking itself, Iowa had little issue responding with a 79-yard touchdown drive that was kickstarted by a 54-yard run by Kaleb Johnson, who finished with 187 yards and a pair of scores — including the Hawkeyes' last score of the game, as it would turn out, to put the Hawkeyes up 19-7.

"They got their first touchdown and I was really happy with the way we responded,' said Ferentz. "We took it 79 yards for a touchdown drive, so that's what you're looking for. [...] Then we weren't good enough the rest of the way to respond the way you need to."

Iowa ended up going for two, aiming to push its lead to 21-7, but McNamara couldn't connect with Reece Vander Zee as the Cyclones' red zone pass defense continued to frustrate the Hawkeye offense.

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Iowa responded to ISU's first touchdown drive of the game with one of its own, pushing the ball 79 yards in just seven plays to reclaim a double-digit lead at 19-7.

That margin lasted all of 11 seconds, as Iowa State struck on a play-action bomb to WR Jaylin Noel in front of a flat-footed Xavier Nwankpa.

Middle linebacker Jay Higgins took responsibility for the touchdown after the game.

"My job is to take some speed at that receiver running right at [Nwankpa], said Higgins after the game. "He's counting on me to slow that guy down, re-route him, throw their timing off, and I didn't do that on that play. Everybody's going to look at X, blame him, but it was on me."

Whether Higgins' culpability in the TD is accurate or not is something few outside the Iowa locker room know for a fact, of course. But Nwankpa saw Koen Entringer take over at strong safety for most, if not all, of the snaps thereafter.

After a field goal drive narrowed Iowa's lead to 19-17, the Hawkeyes badly needed to strike back. A touchdown and extra point would have pushed the lead back to two scores, and a field goal would have at least forced the Cyclones to find the end zone on the final possession.

The drive started inauspiciously at best, with Iowa facing a 3rd-and-10 after some obvious attempts to feed Kaleb Johnson found little success. At this point, McNamara wound up for a deep shot to Kaleb Brown (still working himself into the staff's good graces after an offseason OWI arrest), but the step Brown had on his defender came to nothing when Cyclone DB Malik Verdon flew in to swat the ball away.

McNamara's pass wasn't hopelessly off-target; Brown might have even made a falling catch were it not for Verdon. Five more yards of oomph on the throw, though, and Brown is dancing in the end zone instead.

"It just comes down to us being able to execute the play, and we just weren't able to do that well enough today," McNamara said.

Iowa's three-and-out meant the Hawkeye defense had little time on the sideline to recover for the closing stretch, and little time burnt off the clock to keep that lead intact.

Freshman punter Rhys Dakin had a good-not-great day Saturday, averaging 40.3 yards on nine punts and putting three inside the 20 with no touchbacks.

Dakin's last punt turned out to be the one he'd want back, though, as his punt from Iowa's 41-yard-line carried only to the ISU 22, where it was fair-caught by Noel — a paltry 37 yards in a situation that, well, called for more. Iowa even took a delay-of-game penalty prior to Dakin's last punt, giving the cannon-legged Australian 59 yards of room instead of 54.

"Yeah, [Dakin] could punt the ball out of the end zone," Ferentz said when asked if the team should have used a timeout to preserve field position as it bled clock. "It didn't matter. The yardage really wasn't important."

If Dakin had executed his punt as well as he had been in the first half, of course, the ball would have been deep in the shadows of the north goal posts, and the Cyclones' job would have been awfully tougher with just 34 seconds on the clock.

As it stood, though, ISU just needed 42 yards for field goal range, and it got most of those thanks to...

After Iowa State got a quick 10 yards from Noel to make it to the 32, Becht found his favorite receiver one last time for a 30-yard gain on an out-and-up, delivering the ball in stride as Sebastian Castro overcommitted to defending the sideline.

Becht's placement was perfect, leading Noel to a sea of green grass as Iowa's man defense broke down at the worst time.

"[The Cyclones ran] a bunch of man-beaters, because we were playing man the whole last drive," said Castro. "They executed their plays, and we just have to do better."

With no timeouts on the clock, which was perched at a perilous nine seconds left after a spike, Iowa State coach Matt Campbell eschewed any tries at getting Konrardy closer to the target and sent him out for the kick — which looked good from 60.

Campbell said he didn't hesitate to lean on Konrardy after he missed a field goal at the end of the first half.

"I'll be honest, I didn't think anything of it," Campbell said. "I just have such faith in him. I watched this guy kick a 64-yarder in the last fall camp. [...] You have to have an elite craft, and that's what Kyle's showing."

Iowa, for whatever it's worth, didn't call a timeout to ice the Cyclones' freshman kicker before he drilled the game-winner. Recent numbers suggest icing still has a real effect, especially on attempts with the game on the line, but whether it would have mattered here is a debate now left to the football gods.

In an odd way it's somewhat encouraging that Iowa could leave this many opportunities on the table and still only lose by one point to a tough, talented, motivated Power 5 team. It's not just coachspeak to say every one of the team's goals is still on the table for the season; aside from "15-0," it's the truth.

But make no mistake: losing a rivalry game — with so many chances to put it away instead — stings for anyone on the Hawkeyes. The goal now as they prepare for Troy and the Big Ten schedule: turning as many of these missed opportunities into lessons as possible.