What you have in your hands is the Iowa State Daily’s basketball supplement for the 2011-12 season. It gives you a preview of the season ahead for both the men’s and women’s teams.

As you’ll read in the following pages, both teams are coming into this season having lost their leading scorers and leaders of their teams on and off the court.

But where the teams diverge is when fans and onlookers hop aboard the hype train.

The women’s team, much like last year, enters the season with a lot of question marks.

Who’s the point guard? Who’s going to score? Who’s going to lead the team? How will coach Bill Fennelly’s health (see: page 17) affect the team in practice and in games?

And once again the team is picked to finish in the middle of the road in the Big 12. Fennelly’s teams are routinely picked there, and usually finish in or near the top five at season’s end.

If Fennelly and Co. can find a go-to scorer like they had in Alison Lacey and Kelsey Bolte, things will be just fine.

We know one thing the Cyclone women will do well: rebounding the basketball. They have that presence in Chelsea Poppens and will lean on her to keep them in games.

Motivation to play in front of their home crowd in the opening rounds of the NCAA tournament will also fuel the fires under Fennelly, his staff and his players.

But still, whether it’s warranted or not, the women’s team isn’t getting the attention the men’s is.

The hype train powering Cylcones men’s hoops has been gaining steam since Chris Allen, Chris Babb, Royce White and Anthony Booker stepped foot on campus.

Cyclone fans — and even the players themselves — are predicting big things for the team. Having four players who were key members at their former schools creates assumptions that more talent equals more wins.

That may be the case most of the time, but we have yet to actually see this team play together. Coach Fred Hoiberg and his players talk about how they’ve gelled so far, but the reality is we won’t know until the real games are played.

The Cyclones were ranked No. 8 in the preseason Big 12 poll, which is far lower than what Cyclone Nation might hope or expect.

There are two avenues we think this team can go down: Either they can gel (as they’ve said they have) and play well, or they can implode while trying to find out who the go-to player is.

With the talent they have, there’s no doubt this team can go far this season — on paper. The potential for the Cyclone men is huge, and if they can come together, an NCAA tournament berth is easily within the realm of possibility.

But until we see them in Big 12 play, it’ll be hard to get a good reading — after all, the 2010-11 team started 13-3 and finished 3-13.

Let’s give both men’s and women’s teams time to show us who and what they really are.

They will, it’s just a matter of when.