He may not have been a preseason All-Big 12 selection like one of his teammates, but Texas A&M’s other starting forward spelled doom for the Cyclones on Tuesday.

Bryan Davis had 16 points and seven rebounds as the No. 18 Aggies (19-4, 5-3) came out with a 69-51 win over the ISU men’s basketball team in front of 11,955 fans at Hilton Coliseum on a snowy Ames night.

Iowa State (13-10, 3-5) held preseason All-Big 12 forward Joseph Jones to just four points, but had no answer for Davis.

“They have a lot of depth on that front line – a lot of big bodies they bring in to bang around down there, and they really focus on getting the ball inside,” said senior forward Alex Thompson. “I let them get too deep a few times.”

Center Jiri Hubalek said the game plan was to try to limit touches for Texas A&M’s post players and make them get the ball further from the basket.

On Tuesday, they were unsuccessful at limiting Davis. Aggie center DeAndre Jordan also scored eight points inside off the bench.

“I think we just didn’t execute as a team or follow the plan,” Hubalek said. “We had a plan to keep it out of the big guys’ hands. Obviously, they are very good post players, and they got some good looks and made us pay for it.”

Hubalek tried to keep the Cyclones in the game by going blow for blow with Davis. Hubalek ended with a game-high 18 points, nine of them coming in the first 10 minutes of play, but wasn’t satisfied with his offensive effort.

“I think offensively we had some good looks,” he said. “I had some good looks I needed to finish and I didn’t.”

After the Cyclones went on a 10-0 run capped by a dunk to make the score 22-19, Texas A&M closed out the half on an 11-2 run. Iowa State would not regain the lead.

Davis then opened the second half with six quick points to push the lead to 12. A three-pointer by Derrick Roland made the score 56-36 with 10:30 left to play.

Texas A&M maintained its balanced scoring attack, with six players scoring eight points or more. The Cyclones, meanwhile, only had two players score over five points in Hubalek and sophomore guard Wesley Johnson.

“I really felt for us to beat a team like A&M that everybody was going to have to have their average, and somebody was going to have to be extraordinary – and we didn’t get that tonight,” McDermott said.

Johnson was in the starting lineup for the first time since he reaggravated a bone bruise in his left foot last week against Colorado. Johnson played 31 minutes, scoring 13 points.

McDermott said the decision to play Johnson was made in Monday’s practice after he showed noticeable improvement from Sunday, and made even more improvement while shooting around Tuesday morning.

Although he was able to score double-digit points and come up with some rebounds in traffic, McDermott said the biggest issue was adjusting to competition again for Johnson.

“The problem is you miss three or four days of practice again and it just throws your timing off – and it’s not what our team needed at this point in time,” McDermott said.