Wildcats await Cyclones in day 2
Photographer: Zunkai Zhao/Iowa State Daily
ISU women basketball defeated Nebraska in the first round of the Big 12 Championship, 69-61.
March 8, 2011
Less than 24 hours after holding off a pesky Nebraska team, Iowa State will return to the floor at the Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City, Mo., as it takes on the No. 4 seed Kansas State Wildcats in a Big 12 Tournament quarterfinal game.
The Cyclones (22-9) swept the Wildcats (20-9) during the regular season with a 61-53 win at home and a 58-51 win Feb. 26 in Manhattan.
“We’re going to play a really, really good team that we beat twice, which is great,” said ISU coach Bill Fennelly.
The Wildcats enter Big 12 Tournament play on a two-game winning streak which began with a 71-67 upset of No. 5 Texas A&M in Manhattan, Kan., last Wednesday and continued as they clinched the No. 4 seed in the tournament with a 56-51 win over in-state rival Kansas.
Leading Kansas State is the inside-out duo of sophomore guard Brittany Chambers and junior forward Jalana Childs. Chambers, a unanimous All-Big 12 first team selection, paces the Wildcats with 16.1 points per game and drained as many 3-pointers, 81, as ISU senior guard Kelsey Bolte during the regular season. The 6-foot-2-inch Childs averages 13.6 points on 45.6 percent shooting.
“We’re just going to prepare like we always do,” Bolte said. “It’s a game just like any other one.”
The Cyclones will again be without sophomore forward Amanda Zimmerman, who missed the regular season finale at Missouri and Tuesday’s game against Nebraska due to illness.
“We play low scoring, hard-fought games with them, the challenge for us will be to say out of foul trouble because we aren’t very deep without Z,” Fennelly said.
Fennelly assured after Tuesday’s back-and-forth battle that even without Zimmerman coming off the bench, the game against the Wildcats will not be decided by the Cyclones’ energy level after the win over Nebraska.
“If we lose tomorrow, it will not be because we were tired from today. That’s not fair to the other team,” Fennelly said. “We’re going to show up and play and hopefully it will be a great quarterfinal game.”
The Cyclones and Wildcats will tip off at 1:30 p.m.
