After snapping a five-game conference skid, the ISU men’s basketball team has another chance to right its ship.

The Cyclones (12-10, 3-5 Big 12) welcome Missouri (13-8, 2-6 Big 12) to Hilton Coliseum on Tuesday night, a team they already beat once this season.

Greg McDermott got his first Big 12 win as Iowa State’s coach on Jan. 6 when the Cyclones came from 16 down in the second half to knock off the Tigers on their home court.

“We did kind of steal a game from them, but we did play really hard,” ISU forward Wesley Johnson said. “We were down a numerous amount of points, but then we started playing defense and got on a roll.”

Missouri dropped its first four games of its conference schedule, before winning back-to-back games over Colorado and Texas Tech. Since then, the Tigers lost to Kansas State and Nebraska, bringing their two-game losing skid and thoughts of revenge for Iowa State’s win in Columbia, Mo., to Ames.

“They are a very capable basketball team and we understand that,” McDermott said. “We stole one from them there and that game was a possession or two away from us losing by 20. If they make a couple plays and we turn the ball over a few times, that 16-point deficit turns into 20-something and then you are really fighting an uphill battle, and it is tough to get back in it.

“But we made just enough plays to hang around and put ourselves in a position where we had a chance to make a play at the end to win.”

In its first meeting with the Tigers, Iowa State rode Johnson to victory. The Cyclone freshman made a layup with 11 seconds to play to pull the Cyclones to within one point and scored on a tip-in with 1.4 seconds left to hand Iowa State the win.

Johnson scored 14 points and grabbed 13 rebounds in the win, getting a hand from Dodie Dunson, who scored 17 of his career-best 19 points in the second half.

Missouri, employing its “40 minutes of hell” defense that had pushed it to wins in 11 of its first 13 games, forced just six Cyclone turnovers in the second half. Iowa State’s ability to handle Missouri’s pressure allowed the Cyclones to chip away at their deficit.

“Because of the pressure they are going to put on us, Corey [McIntosh], Mike [Taylor] and Dodie will all have to be on the floor [for] significant minutes because they are our primary ball handlers,” McDermott said. “We would like to have Wesley involved in that more because he has shown as the season has moved forward that he is capable of that.

“So, it is a fine line between wanting to control the tempo, yet you want to attack their pressure and make them pay for that pressure if you can.”

Johnson thinks the Tigers will ratchet up their pressure when the two teams meet again.

“I think they are going to try to pressure the ball a little more,” Johnson said. “We have young guards so they are going to try to pressure the ball a lot more than they did the last game, and I feel they will try to control the tempo rather than having us control the tempo.

“We just have to pick the right time to run up and down the floor. There are certain times when we need to slow the ball down, but there are also times that we need to push it because we have an advantage. We just need to pick and choose when to run and when to slow it down.”

Having already seen the Tiger pressure once gives Iowa State another advantage.

“It was tough to prepare them for that the first time, not that it will make it any easier, but at least as we talk about it in practice I think they know a little more about what we might see on Tuesday night,” McDermott said.