ISU coach Bill Fennelly feels rebounding is about effort and on Saturday night, forward Chelsea Poppens displayed a lot of it.

No. 25 Iowa State weathered a slow start and defeated TCU 68-52 on Saturday night at Hilton Coliseum behind Poppens’ 24-point, 15-rebound performance. Saturday marked the fourth time in Poppens’ career with more than 20 points and 15 rebounds.

Poppens seemed to be stressed out in the days leading up to the Cyclones’ (12-2, 3-1 Big 12) game against the Horned Frogs (7-8, 0-4 Big 12). Fennelly said this was because of the way things have been going recently for the team.

“The kid cares so much about her team and cares so much about doing things right that we just tried to get her relaxed,” Fennelly said. “You put in a couple plays for her, and the term I kept hearing is, ‘That was Pop. Pop’s back.’”

In the win, Poppens became the fourth ISU player to surpass 900 career rebounds. As a team that usually plays a faster pace, TCU struggled to get rebounds, losing the battle 44-25 overall and 17-6 on the offensive end.

“If you can’t rebound, it’s hard to play fast,” said TCU coach Jeff Mittie. “Then we got in foul trouble, so we intentionally played slow the last four minutes just trying to get to halftime. I thought the first four minutes of the second half, we missed four free throws and a layup, and that was our opportunity to get this thing back.”

Only down by five points at halftime, TCU struggled to get anything going offensively as Iowa State began the second half on a 15-3 run.

At halftime after trailing much of the first half, the Cyclones went into the locker room and, as guard Brynn Williamson said, talked about how they are a much better team than how they had been playing.

“We were playing like a team that didn’t have a huge home crowd and didn’t have Hilton behind them and weren’t playing like we had just come off a loss,” Williamson said.

For Poppens, getting a rebound is not a selfish play. She sees it as an opportunity for her team. Poppens collected six offensive rebounds.

“The whole goal is to get my teammates another shot,” Poppens said. “It helps the whole team and gets everyone motivated just to have another try at it.”