When Cyclone fans last saw the ISU men’s basketball team at Hilton Coliseum, coach Fred Hoiberg and players talked about a lack of communication on defense that led to the 69-62 loss to Northern Iowa last Wednesday.

The same message was delivered by guard Chris Allen after the squad’s 76-66 loss to No. 15 Michigan on Saturday in Ann Arbor, Mich.

“We just needed to start fighting earlier in the game,” Allen told The Associated Press. “It’s about communication on the floor, and we got away from that.”

Allen ended the game with 11 points, all coming in the second half. It was in the second stanza that the game seemed to get away from Iowa State (5-3).

During a stretch in the early part of the second half, Michigan (6-2) scored on 11 straight possessions, extending the lead to 20 points and creating enough of a lead to take the win.

“We just started playing as five individuals instead of as a team,” Hoiberg told the AP. “We had been defending well and we were getting good looks. But we didn’t make the shots, and I think we got frustrated, and we let them get hot.”

The Cyclones shot 35.8 percent as a team and just 22.2 percent from 3-point range. While the Wolverines did build the lead up, Iowa State was able to make it interesting late in the second half.

With Michigan up 68-50, the Cyclones went on a 16-4 run that cut the lead to six with just 22 seconds left. The run frustrated Hoiberg as much as it encouraged him.

“That showed us again what we are capable of doing,” Hoiberg said. “The problem is that we didn’t start playing like that until it was too late. We can’t let them go on stretches of making 11 straight shots — they are a good team, but we have to get after them and stop that streak.”

Michigan iced the game at the free-throw line and got the win, bouncing back from an upset loss to unranked Virginia on Tuesday. Wolverines coach John Beilein told the AP after the game that he was proud of the win.

“That’s a quality win,” Beilein said. “We are going to play a lot of teams this season that can shoot 3-pointers, but we aren’t going to play many teams that can get back into a game as fast as Iowa State.”

Bringing the game back in the late stages helped ease the frustrations of a poor shooting night for the Cyclones. With shots not falling, Hoiberg said players quit believing in themselves.

The loss proved that once again, if Iowa State isn’t hitting from deep, things likely won’t end well for the Cyclones.

“We finally started to believe in ourselves late in the game,” Hoiberg told Cyclones.com. “We had some good looks at the basket, but they just didn’t go in today. It was one of those days where the ball didn’t go in the basket.”