Another Tiger Bites the Dust in Hilton

Final Score: Iowa State 85 and Texas Southern 73. The Cyclones improve to 3-0 on the season with a week until the next game against a Pac 12 opponent in Arizona.

The viewer ship once again for this game was limited. If you weren’t at the game, John Walters and Eric Heft provided us with a great gamecast. The score suggests less, but with Coach Prohm looking for STTTTUUUU, he had to settle for the rest of the bench which did not show us a whole lot. Regardless, there were some great high points of the game.

The team came out in the all gold jerseys and still haven’t busted out my preseason prediction of Red jerseys and gold shorts. Give it time...

Texas Southern was actually the first ones to strike to go up 2-0 and would be pesky for a few minutes of the first half. Luckily we came out of our funk. We knew we could not overlook Texas Southern as they BEAT BAYLOR in Waco. Texas Southern actually has more experience and older players. Don’t count these guys out any night of the week!

Iowa State led at the half: 48-35

Player of the game: Tough choice. NWB had an impressive double double with 13 points, 13 rebounds, and 5 assists. Impressive stat, no doubt. But I felt Shayok really displayed himself well. In 36 mintues he had a career high of 26 points and tied for game high with Horton-Tucker. Shayok also had a handful of rebounds. However, 4 turnovers on the night from him is a slight buzz kill. THT did very well. And I have to give him the game ball. Regardless, our starters did well tonight. Although inexperienced compared to Texas Southern, we did well.

ISU was hot form 3 in first half but cooled down in the second half. THT himself made 5 out of our7 made threes. ISU finished behind the arc at just over 30%, going 7-23

Iowa State defended well with contested shots beyond the arc. Texas Southern is bigger down below, which was a slight issue, but we kept them at bay. They made more points in the paint, but went 25% from 3 point land. Texas Southern did not want to give us all the glory, however. They beat us in the paint 36-28. Iowa State does not have much of a post presence. With Texas Southern’s bigs, they bullied us around only to allow our quickness grab some boards and push the ball.

We were concerned about Patterson coming off the bench for Texas Southern. We did well to defend him. He had 11 points on the night and 3 steals. The Texas Southern bench outscored Iowa State 32-1. Yes, you read that correctly. Sounds like the UConn women’s basketball season record. However, the silver lining here is our starters handled the game well. And that’s why they are out there.

Final highlights link: https://www.facebook.com/IowaStateMensBasketball/videos/308565913324077/

It was a great win tonight. Time to focus on Arizona and head to Maui! Well, I’m not, but the team is. Where did I go wrong in life!

Go Cyclones!