“Iowa State for three!”

By the end of Sunday’s game public address announcer Gary Wade’s confirmation of a 3-point shot  began to sound repetitive.

As a team Iowa State sank 18 shots from beyond the arc, tying a single game school record while the Cyclones (7-2) rode their 3-point shooting to a 75-39 blowout of Detroit Mercy (2-6).

When told the team had tied the school record, guard Alison Lacey seemed slightly surprised.

“We did? Oh well done,” Lacey said.

Detroit Mercy came out in a zone defense, which allowed Iowa State to find open space on the outside. The Cyclones found their range right away, using eight threes’ to start the game on a 28-4 run.

“We normally don’t see a zone. It was one those things that everybody was looking at the bench like ‘I’m open should I shoot it?’ I was like yeah I guess,” said coach Bill Fennelly said. “It was weird. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a game when you shoot 48 threes and one free-throw.”

Of Iowa State’s 73 shot attempts, only 25 of them were not from the 3-point territory.

Senior guard Heather Ezell lead the Cyclones’ shooting barrage by recording a season high 24 points.

Ezell appeared to be on the same wavelength as Lucca Staiger, who shot a career high eight 3-pointers during the ISU men’s game Tuesday against Drake. Ezell matched her male counterpart with eight of her own – two shy of her school record of 10.

“Certainly Heather had one of those dream halves like Lucca had the other night,” Fennelly said.

Like the rest of the team, Ezell got going early. She sank her first five attempts. 

“It was just nice to get the first one to drop,” Ezell said. “They were playing a zone so we had a lot of open shots from the outside and we were able knock some down. After that they just kinda kept going down.”

After shooting 8-11 in the first half, the shots stopped falling for Ezell as she failed to convert her five second half attempts.

“When you talk about streaky that’s her. But when she gets it going she feels it. She can shoot it deep,” Fennelly said. “She can hit some tough ones too because of her range and her ability to shoot over the top of people.”

The rest of the team made up for Ezell cold streak with five other players [Lacey, Kelsey Bolte, Denae Stuckey, Whitney Williams and Anna Florzak] combined for 10 3-pointers, Florzak the tied the record with less than four minutes to go in the game.

Although Ezell was only Cyclone player in double figures, nine other players scored, including nine points by Lacey and forward Nicky Wieben.

With school finals only a day away, Iowa State will have a week before next Sunday’s home showdown against border rival Minnesota.

“We won’t practice Monday or Tuesday. We have a single-minded focus now. It’s all school,” Fennelly said. “We’ll bring them back Wednesday and blow the cobwebs off. We won’t teach anything because their minds will be mush. We’ll just run around a bit. We’ll start putting in the game plan on Thursday.”