As most fans were sleeping Monday morning, Cyclone guard Sean Haluska was in the gym bright and early working on his shot in an attempt to break out of a slump that saw him start the season 1-for-27 from behind the arc.

In Tuesday’s win over Colorado, that practice paid off as Haluska scored a career-high nine points on 2-for-3 shooting from 3-point range.

“It’s been a tough stretch, but it’s definitely great to knock down some shots and just help the team any way that I can,” Haluska said. “It shows that getting in the gym and working on my shot is something that I need to keep doing, four or five times, or however many times a week I can get in there. Hopefully the results will just stay the same.”

Coach Greg McDermott said that seeing Haluska make the effort to improve his shot on his own time was an encouraging sight.

“Sean and I have been on a little roller coaster from encouragement to me being very hard on him,” McDermott said. “To his credit, he was here at 6:30 Monday morning getting shots up.”

In that early-morning shoot-around, Haluska was joined by guards Cameron Lee, Charles Boozer and Lucca Staiger.

Haluska’s nine points against the Buffaloes on Tuesday were not the only contribution made by the Cyclone bench, which stepped off the plank for a season-high 27 points after leading scorer Wesley Johnson left the game due to a sprained ankle.

Luckily for McDermott, his bench players came prepared.

“It’s that kind of commitment that you have to have off your guys off the bench, because you never know when something like [Johnson’s injury] is going to happen. They’re going to be thrown into the heat of battle and they have to be ready,” he said.

Iowa State (13-8, 3-3 Big 12) will need another lift from their bench on Saturday if Johnson is unable to play when they travel to Lincoln to take on Nebraska (12-6, 1-4).

Nebraska, which leads the Big 12 in scoring defense by allowing just 58.2 points per game, is led by senior big man Aleks Maric. At 6-foot-11-inches and 275 pounds, Maric has the ability to control the inside game and could pose problems for Cyclone big men Jiri Hubalek, Craig Brackins and Alex Thompson.

If Johnson is unable to play, the Cyclone bench will be relied upon to take some pressure off of their post players by hitting some outside shots and opening up the inside-outside game.

Lee said that with the additional practice that he, Haluska and Boozer have put in, they will be ready when called upon.

“Coach always told me to be ready because you never know what will happen. We played without Wes at the beginning of the season, and we did pretty good,” Lee said.