1. The defense?
It was pretty good. Very good, some might say. Baylor struggled to score for most of the game, and Baylor struggled to move the ball well even when they were scoring. It was a big jump for the Cyclones, and not on the end in which we’ve been putting most of our hope.
2. Tre Jackson’s back.
It’s hard to say exactly how much of the defensive surge should be credited to Jackson, but it does seem unlikely to be pure coincidence that ISU showed some life on that end for the first time in his first game of the year.
3. Offensively…still bad.
Atrocious. Turnovers everywhere. No ball movement whatsoever. It was the kind of performance that’s not unsightly on its own against Baylor, but as a continuation of everything else ISU’s been doing looks pretty bad.
4. It was progress.
Overall, it’s hard to be unhappy having played a team that good close for so much of the game. One would hope this is a step forward, and there’s no reason to believe it isn’t, but there’s the question of whether it will be enough. At this point, it’s hard to find opportunities on the schedule (Kansas State does come up again in a week and a half, but after that it’s a long wait to play TCU at home), making the fear of losses mounting, and all that comes with losses mounting, a legitimate one.
We’ll see.
