In the history of ISU basketball, only three men had ever compiled a triple-double. On Saturday in College Station, Texas, forward Royce White became the fourth — and the first to record a triple-double in a Big 12 game since former Cyclone Curtis Stinson did so in 2006 — in a 74-50 win against Texas A&M.

With 10 points, 18 rebounds and 10 assists, White joined Mark Urquhart (1989), Jamaal Tinsley (2000) and Stinson on the list of Cyclones who’d accomplished the feat.

“You could see it in his eyes out of the gate,” said coach Fred Hoiberg to Cyclones Sports Radio after the game. “He was not only getting rebounds, he was swallowing rebounds, going up there and getting them with two hands.”

White may not have been the Cyclones’ (12-3, 2-0 Big 12) leading scorer in the win against the Aggies (9-5, 0-2), but his play facilitated most of the scoring. A team that values its play in transition, White’s rebounding sparked several fast breaks, Hoiberg said.

“[A&M] tried to get up the floor a little bit with Dash Harris and pressure [guard] Chris Allen,” Hoiberg said. “And when Royce gets those rebounds and brings the ball down the floor, he can get our guys great looks. That’s what we did early and got out of the gate to a 10-point lead.”

It was the second straight game Iowa State saw its defense play at a high level, holding both Texas (40.7 percent) and Texas A&M (31.3 percent) well below their season field goal percentages of 43.6 percent and 45 percent.

White said that more than his individual performance, he and the team are playing well as a unit right now, something that hasn’t necessarily been the case throughout the pre-conference season.

“We’re really coming into a place where we understand our identity,” White said to Cyclones Sports Radio following the game. “Offensively, first and foremost, we’ve known that for a while now that we’re a shooting team [and] we want to get out and run in transition. But now we’re really starting to find our groove defensively and how important it is to communicate from one man to the next and having all five play as a team.”

Allen echoed his teammate’s sentiments, and said he thinks the team is finally starting to come together on the court, as many fans and media wondered could be possible before the season.

As a senior, and a member of two Final Four teams at Michigan State, Allen said he knows well that this point in the season is usually when teams find out if they will gel or not.

“We’re clicking right now,” Allen said to Cyclones Sports Radio after the game. “Everybody’s taking their shots with confidence, everybody’s screening. All the little things we didn’t do at the beginning of the year, we’re doing now.

“Like I said at the beginning of the year, it’s a progression. All our younger guys and guys that haven’t had too many college games, around this time, this is where they start picking this up.”

Communication was the buzzword for the Cyclones early in the season, in that they didn’t have much on either end of the court.

In their first two Big 12 games, however, Hoiberg has been happy with the improvements his team has made in that area and what it means for them going forward.

“Earlier [in the season] our communication wasn’t nearly what it is now,” Hoiberg said. “You go through those spurts and you learn from it, and I’m pleased that our guys have done that as the season’s gone on.”