No matter what kind of defense opponents try to run, the Cyclones still find a way to get around it.

During two wins against ranked conference opponents in the past week, Iowa State faced defensive mentalities as different as black and white against Kansas State and Texas A&M. The Wildcats (49.8 ppg) and Aggies (53.6 ppg) have the two best-scoring defenses in the conference, but still couldn’t find a way to overcome the offensive versatility of the Cyclones.

On Saturday, Iowa State faced a Wildcat defense that loves to slow teams down and beat them with a relentless, methodical, wear-you-down attitude. Since coach Fennelly knew it was “nearly impossible to run an offensive set” against them, the Cyclones ditched their conventional offensive strategy and attacked in a different way. The new scheme worked, as the Cyclones slashed and dashed their way to earning 36 trips to the free-throw line, where they sunk 29 of those shots.

Just three days later, Iowa State faced a stark contrast to the Wildcat defense when they came up against A&M’s athletic, run-and-gun, speed approach. In order to have success against the Aggie mentality, the Cyclones knew the key to the game was limiting turnovers and controlling the tempo.

“It’s not fun to watch sometimes because we’re dribbling the ball for 30 seconds,” ISU coach Bill Fennelly said. “But that’s what I told them to do. Dribble the ball, don’t pass it. If you’re dribbling the ball and not passing it, they’re not stealing it. It isn’t the most smooth thing to watch but that’s what we had to do, and we scored 67 points against a very good defensive team.”

The ISU offense became just the second team to score more than 60 against the Aggies, and their 67 points scored were the second-most the team has given up in a game all season. The only other team to score more was No. 2 Oklahoma with 71.

Texas A&M leads the Big 12 in steals (12.4) and turnovers (17.1) per game, and the Cyclones found a way to control both of the Aggies’ primary weapons for defensive success. Iowa State only turned the ball over 10 times and limited A&M to just 5 steals.

“We talked so much about taking care of the ball,” Fennelly said. “And to turn the ball ten times against anyone is really good, but to turn the ball over only ten times against a team like that is absolutely incredible.”

Not all story lines from a game can be discovered in the box score, but the stats don’t lie in showing the offensive flexibility of Iowa State in its past two victories. During their attack-the-basket mentality against Kansas State, the Cyclones took just three more shots from the field in the game — 39 — than they did at the free-throw line — 36. But against A&M, the trend was wildly reversed as the margin jumped from 3 to 39, as they took 56 shots from the floor and 17 from the charity stripe.

“For us to be able to come in and get that many shots off, you really have to give credit to the coaching staff for setting it up,” senior Heather Ezell said. “Then we did what we had to do on the offensive end. To hit the open man when they’re open and things like that really helped us.”

Although Ezell’s barrage of seven 3-pointers in the game were the driving force behind the offense, the Cyclones got contributions — whether obvious or not — from all eleven players that stepped foot on the Hilton Coliseum floor on Wednesday.

 “Fennelly was totally prepared for this,” Texas A&M coach Gary Blair said. “They ran some new stuff, they ran some old stuff, but it all boils down to execution. It’s not Ezell’s three’s that beat us. They beat us with the execution from every player on the court.”

The Cyclones scored 18 second-chance points on offense, in big part because of their ability to get to the glass on the offensive end. Iowa State pulled down 15 offensive rebounds in the process of outrebounding the Aggies 43-29, and were able to convert on several opportunities the got from the extra offensive effort.

“Offensive rebounding in the women’s game is all about effort,” Fennelly said. “We stress it because we’re not a team that scores a lot, so we need to get more shots and it changes the game. We had a couple of offensive rebounds we kicked out for a three or got to the free-throw line. Getting offensive rebounds and taking charges are the two ultimate team things your can do, and our kids are doing it on the offensive end.”