With all five Cyclone seniors penciled into the starting lineup on Saturday night, the ISU women’s basketball team created an early cushion against Kansas which allowed the team to cruise to a 59-49 victory on senior night at Hilton Coliseum. The Cyclones led by as much as 17 and by no less than seven points in the second half.

A season-high crowd of 12,689 witnessed each of the seniors find their way into the scoring column as they were all an integral part in propelling the No. 22 Cyclones (23-7, 11-5 Big 12) to a win in the Big 12 regular season finale. Iowa State’s 23rd win of the season ties a program-best mark for regular season victories which was set in the 1997-98 season.

Despite the positional imbalance of their abnormally tall starting lineup, the five seniors still managed to put together a solid opening run to help put the Cyclones ahead early.

“We were very concerned about how we were going to start,” said coach Bill Fennelly. “We started four post players and a guard, and we don’t have that in our playbook. We put in a couple of plays and they played great. To their credit, they got engaged in the game right away at both ends of the floor and they played that way the whole time.”

Thanks to two 3-pointers in the game’s first two and a half minutes from the recently red-hot Amanda Nisleit, Iowa State grabbed an 8-0 lead right out of the gate to help the Cyclones settle down amidst a highly emotional atmosphere.

“It shows how much this senior class is capable of doing,” said senior Heather Ezell. “To start four posts and a guard and for us to be successful with it in those first four minutes is something that shows a lot about this seniors’ class. We were going to do whatever it took to make sure we ended our careers at Hilton with a win.”

The early stages of the game saw Iowa State run a fairly balanced offense, but with nine minutes remaining in the first half, senior night suddenly turned into The Nicky Wieben Show.

The senior from Ankeny went to work in the paint and scored 16 of Iowa State’s next 18 points in a run that helped put the Cyclones up by a dozen at the half. Wieben ended the game with team highs in points and rebounds with 20 and 9, respectively.

“I thought Nick was really active and aggressive with the ball,” Fennelly said. Though she may have struggled in both games last week, Wieben’s outstanding play came as no surprise to the ISU coaching staff. Because of Kansas’ defensive style of play, her dominance of the Jayhawks in the paint has been commonplace throughout her career in Ames. Saturday night marked the seventh consecutive game that Wieben has scored 14 points or more against the Jayhawks.

“[Kansas does] a great job at switching and jumping out into the passing lanes, and you can’t run an offense against them because they don’t let you reverse the ball,” Fennelly said. “We wanted to throw it inside. That’s something we talked a lot about and something we felt we had to do against them. The game plan by Kansas makes us throw her the ball, and to her credit she found some ways to score when we really needed it.”

Fellow 1,000-point club member Ezell chipped in 14 points in her final game at Hilton Coliseum, moving her into the tenth place on Iowa State all-time scoring list with 1,290.

Thanks to some help from their friends in Waco, the Cyclones secured the No. 3 seed for next week’s Big 12 Tournament in Oklahoma City. A 64-60 victory by Baylor over Texas A&M on Saturday allowed Iowa State to finish the season tied with the Aggies in the conference standings, but a 67-50 head-to-head victory earlier the season helped give the Cyclones the nod for the third place spot. It is Iowa State’s best finish in conference play since the 2004-2005 season.

The Cyclones are set to play their first game of the tournament against the winner of Texas/Missouri game at 7:30 next Friday night.