The ISU women’s basketball team turned the ball over, couldn’t shoot from the arc and couldn’t make layups. Despite these difficulties, the women defeated Minnesota on Saturday night, but it wasn’t pretty.

The Cyclones (7-1) beat the Golden Gophers (8-2), 67-57, despite turning the ball over 17 times, going 6-of-23 from three-point land and missing an extraordinary amount of layups.

“The last time I saw that many missed layups was this morning in little Eric Steyer’s [assistant coach Jodi Steyer’s son] third-grade game,” said coach Bill Fennelly. “It was just weird, and everybody did it.”

Coming into the last game of the first semester, Fennelly compared the game against a tough Gophers team to a final exam. When the final horn sounded, “Professor” Fennelly was quick to put the sloppy play out of mind, saying that he grades on a curve and the Cyclones got an “A.”

“If you watched the game, and you look at the stats, it probably wasn’t the most aesthetic thing you’ve ever seen,” Fennelly said. “There are so many times for the players where they are so consumed by what they did wrong, and right now they found a way to win the game in front of the fans and family on TV.”

The Cyclones played at Minnesota last season, losing 66-61 in a game of such physical nature that Fennelly said the Cyclones came back in body bags. Saturday night was more of the same in what senior Megan Ronhovde called the most physical game of the season thus far.

“There are situations where the ball is dead, and they are rubbing up against you trying to make sure you can’t get position,” Ronhovde said. “Having played them up there last year we knew what to expect, so that was an advantage for us.”

Freshman center Rachel Pierson wasn’t fazed by the physical play, scoring 14 points in the game. Pierson went 5-of-5 shooting for 12 points in the first half, but her biggest contribution was drawing fouls. By halftime, Gophers center Ashley Ellis-Milan had two fouls, and her replacement, Zoe Harper, had three.

Getting the Gophers into foul trouble paid off in the second half. The undersized Gophers fouled often, and the Cyclones reached the bonus just halfway through the second half, playing into Fennelly’s game plan.

“We literally want to make more free throws than our opponents shoot,” Fennelly said. “If that number is that way all the time, we have a chance to win games, and that was a big, big part of our game plan.”

The Cyclones went 17-of-25 from the stripe, while the Gophers reached the line only 15 times, making 10. Free throws went a long way toward covering the blemishes on the night.

“The bottom line is we can’t miss shots like that if we expect to win when Big 12 play comes around,” Ronhovde said. “You play teams like Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Texas . we need every basket we can get.”

The Cyclones won again despite the struggles of senior point guard Lyndsey Medders and sophomore Heather Ezell. Medders scored 11 points, but turned the ball over eight times, and Ezell scored only four points, going 1 of 7 from the field.

With all the mistakes they made, and the recent struggles of players like Medders and Ezell, it almost seems like the Cyclones should have lost. But that, Fennelly says, is the beauty of this team.

“It just seems like we have enough people making plays at the enough times,” Fennelly said.