In their first home game in more than a week, the ISU women’s basketball team took on Oklahoma State at Hilton Coliseum Wednesday night.

Despite a close first half, the Cyclones broke away after halftime for a 73-52 victory behind what coach Bill Fennelly called the best game they’ve played in the paint.

“Tiffany Bias is a great on ball defender, jumps passing lanes, so to have only eight turnovers and have the ability to get the ball inside like we did, I thought collectively by far the best game by our post players,” Fennelly said.

The Cyclones (12-8, 3-6 Big 12) and Cowgirls (12-6, 4-5) swapped leads eight times, with Nikki Moody and Anna Prins leading Iowa State on the scoring end with eight points each.

Prins also had a big half for the Cyclones on the glass, tying a season-high for rebounds with seven and went on to have 16 points and eight rebounds on the game and said aggressiveness played a role in that.

“Their post players are great rebounders as well as scorers,” Prins said. “And we knew that they crash the boards so it was a matter of getting a body on them and really going after [them] and needed to be more aggressive and just go from there.”

Earlier in the week, Hallie Christofferson said the ISU guards had to be at the top of their games and coach Bill Fennelly was very pleased with how they did.

“I thought our guards did a really good job of managing the game,” Fennelly said. “Our game plan was to try and limit the [3-pointer], and I thought we did a good job of guarding Bias and Donohoe with Chaz (Chassidy Cole) and Nikki [Moody] and did a good job there of limiting their looks.”

Christofferson also said that they needed to continue to play hard like they did against Texas A&M on Sunday. That effort was apparent as they limited the Cowgirls to 13 second-chance points.

On their way to victory, Chelsea Poppens had her ninth double-double of the season with 11 points and 16 rebounds, and also drew a pair of charges to bring her total to 25 this season.

Christofferson’s 20 points also helped the Cyclones get their third conference win of the season. The sophomore said the team will need to bring that intensity to practice this week.

“At halftime we knew that we weren’t playing good,” Christofferson said. “So we knew that we had to step it up, and we did that in the second half.”