In the Big 12, this season playing at home and on the road can bring out the best and worst of teams.

Between No. 17 Iowa State (20-5, 8-5) and No. 19 Texas (20-6, 9-4) last night, that difference was widely apparent as the Cyclones led nearly the entire game, winning 85-76. In league play this season, the home team has nearly doubled the losses, going 41-23.

In front of the 14,384 at Hilton Coliseum, Iowa State has won 36 of the last 38 games, with six of their seven wins against ranked opponents this season coming at home, too.

Iowa State comfortably made 49 percent of their shots in front of the home crowd while Texas struggled to make just over 30 percent, missing multiple shots around the rim and open 3-pointers. In Austin, Texas, on Jan. 18, Iowa State made only 39 percent of their shots.

“I thought we did a good job of just not letting them shoot the ball well,” said ISU forward Georges Niang. “I think we just did a good job of playing defense, something that we’ve struggled with down the road.”

The frontcourt was where the biggest difference was between the two games. In Austin, Texas’ Cameron Ridley and Jonathan Holmes combined for 39 points on 16-of-23 shooting and grabbed 18 rebounds. Tonight the NBA-sized combo went 4-of-14 for 18 points while grabbing 14 rebounds.

“We’re better than that and we didn’t come in with a tough enough mindset at the beginning of the game,” said UT coach Rick Barnes. “They beat us, plain and simple. They did what they had to do and we didn’t.

“Toughness isn’t just physically, it’s mentally. We didn’t have it tonight.”

The trio of Georges Niang, Melvin Ejim and DeAndre Kane did the heavy lifting for Iowa State, combining for 67 points on 24-of-42 shooting and brought in 19 boards. They were the only three in double figures, as the rest of the team only managed 6-of-19 shooting.

But to ISU head coach Fred Hoiberg, each player did their part to contribute to the win that thrust the Cyclones one game short of second place in the Big 12.

Monte Morris continued to take care of the ball, distributing six assists with zero turnovers and grabbing four rebounds. Dustin Hogue finished with a quiet nine points and seven rebounds while Matt Thomas added seven points and three assists.

“Even though those guys all scored over 20, I thought this was a total team effort,” Hoiberg said.

In Hoiberg’s mind, the biggest difference came in the turnover margin. At Austin, Iowa State only had 15 assists and turned the ball over a season-high of 18 times, which was only one of two games this season they have done that.

At home against Texas — as Hoiberg likes to point out as one of his favorite stats — the team had 21 assists on 30 made buckets and turned the ball over only six times. Contrast that with turning Texas over 10 times with 17 points stemming from those.

Hoiberg gave credit to Niang too, who battled the 6-foot-9, 285-pound Ridley for most of the night.

“It’s a tough little game when you’ve got to go up against, what is he 7’0, 300 pounds,” Niang joked. “That’s like a sumo-wrestling match.”

Niang and Ejim both attacked Ridley and the rest of the Longhorn bigs off the dribble, which they thought were mismatches they could take advantage of, out-scoring Texas 40-18 in the paint, compared to losing that category 34-22 in Austin.

“We knew that we had some mismatches down there and we thought we could take advantage of it,” Ejim said. “Coach drew up a lot of great plays, we got a lot of easy buckets in transition and a lot of easy lobs. We just knew that was something we could attack them at.”