The Green Bay Phoenix came into Hilton Coliseum Saturday night with a statement to make. A 19-point halftime lead and season-high 30 Cyclone turnovers later, the Phoenix extended their stay in Ames with a 71-57 first-round victory.

The undersized Phoenix established a physical defensive presence early on that rattled the entire team, most notably guards Nikki Moody and Lauren Mansfield combined for 16 turnovers. Green Bay converted those takeaways into 24 points by the break, leaving the Cyclones in a hole they couldn’t get out of.

“It definitely started with their pressure and we kept turning the ball over,” said ISU forward Chelsea Poppens. “We just couldn’t handle it at first and that’s where they just got their energy and got their motivation.”

Green Bay lead the entire game but the lead fluctuated around six points for the first fifteen minutes of play. At the 5:30 mark, Moody drew a foul and went 2-2 from the line to cut the lead to four, 18-22.

A 3-pointer from Phoenix guard Adrian Ritchie answered back and were the first points of a 20-5 Green Bay run to end the half, killing any momentum the Cyclones had begun to create.

“They had the ball,” said freshman Brynn Williamson. “They were just making good decisions, they were making shots, and we couldn’t convert on our end so it was really difficult for us to come together because we were getting so frustrated,” she said.

The team attempted to collect themselves at the break and get into a groove on both ends of the court but the Phoenix came out in the second stanza fired up as well.

“At halftime, we were all just trying to come together, trying to find ourselves again, trying to find how we know we can play basketball and we know we can play better than that so we were just trying to fire everybody up again and start the second half,” said Christofferson.

Averaging nearly 20 points per game and 10.1 rebounds, Julie Wojta was a focus for the Cyclones defensively. She had 14 points, but the bigger difference was the 10 combined 3-pointers from Ritchie, Sarah Eichler and Lydia Bauer.

Iowa State cut the lead to as little as 10 with three minutes remaining, but the Phoenix found a way to answer back after just about every Cyclone basket and Williamson said it just became too little to late.

“We didn’t want to keep going back and forth and kind of wanted to set a tempo and at one point in the second half we did it’s just I think we dug ourselves into such a big hole going into halftime we couldn’t get out of it and we tried to come together and it just didn’t work out,” she said.

Despite winning the rebounding battle 34-22, coach Bill Fennelly said they made too many mistakes in other areas to be able to pull out a victory.

“You turn the ball over that many times, it’s borderline impossible to win unless you do a lot of other things perfect and we certainly didn’t do that today,” he said.

The term rollercoaster ride is only the tip of the iceberg when describing Iowa State’s season. The 0-5 start in conference play is where the up and down season set its course and Fennelly called it his most difficult yet.

“It’s been the hardest season I’ve ever had, for a lot of reasons, and my health isn’t the main one.”

Saturday’s loss marks the first time Iowa State has been eliminated in the first round of the NCAA Tournament while playing at home. The team now enters what Fennelly called the re-evaluating stage, adding that it begins with the head coach.