Editor’s note: The 2001 men’s basketball team completed back-to-back regular season conference championships for the first time since the Cyclones won in 1944 and 1945 when the team was still in the Big Six Conference.

Despite a Big 12 regular season and tournament championship, a trip to the Elite Eight and a No. 3 ranking in the final coaches poll, expectations for the Cyclones in 2001 were relatively low.

Iowa State lost its consensus first team All-American forward, Marcus Fizer, who lead the team in 2000 with 22.8 points and 7.7 rebounds per game. Due to this major loss of production, the Big 12 media picked Iowa State to finish fifth in the conference.

The Cyclones had other ideas, however, as they used an experienced group and balanced attack to prove the experts wrong for the second year in a row.

The 2001 team featured senior point guard Jamaal Tinsley, who improved his shooting touch during the offseason, but lost none of his ball handling skills as he dribbled his way to a first team All-American selection — Iowa State’s second in as many years.

Tinsley was joined in the starting line-up by fellow seniors Kantrail Horton, Paul Shirley and Martin Rancik. Freshman sharp-shooter Jake Sullivan rounded out the starting five.

Although Tinsley led the team with 14.3 points per game, the entire starting line-up averaged more then 10 points per game.

The 2001 campaign got off to an auspicious start as the defending Big 12 Champions got off to a 12-1 start in the non-conference schedule. After beating No. 15 Oklahoma by 20 points to open the Big 12 season, the Cyclones hit a snag. An overtime loss to Oklahoma State and a quadruple overtime loss to Missouri dropped the Cyclones to 1-2 in the conference. The team responded with a school record 10-game winning streak, putting Iowa State back in the hunt for a Big 12 title.

The regular season conference title came down to the final game of the season, as Kansas at 11-4 in the Big 12 would face Missouri and the 12-3 Cyclones facing Nebraska.

Iowa State pulled off an improbable victory over the Cornhuskers in Lincoln earlier in the season as Tinsley inbounded the ball to Rancik with .7 second remaining and Rancik laid it in for the win.

The Cornhuskers came out strong in the second game, however, as Nebraska lead the decisive game by 10 points at halftime. Tinsley put the team on his back in the second half, scoring 23 of his career-high 29 points in his final game at Hilton Coliseum, leading the team to an 86-73 victory and a second straight Big 12 Conference title.

“I’m really proud of our guys, and this is a special deal because we weren’t picked first, we weren’t picked anywhere,” said coach Larry Eustachy. “Marcus is gone; we have no chance is what was said. I knew Paul and Martin were better than people thought.”