DALLAS – It was just too much to overcome.

The ISU men’s basketball team cut an 18-point second-half deficit to two points, but that’s as far as it got, losing its first round Big 12 tournament game to Oklahoma State, 79-70.

The Cowboys used a huge first-half surge to jump ahead of the Cyclones, in which OSU big men Torre Johnson and Mario Boggan combined for 29 of Oklahoma State’s 40 first half points.

The Cowboys’ lead – 13 at half-time – was simply too much for Iowa State.

“I thought that Oklahoma State came out and they played with the intensity that you would expect in the first half of a tournament game,” said ISU coach Wayne Morgan.

“It’s just far, far too much to give, and then to overcome.”

Johnson had 20 points off the bench for the Cowboys, and Boggan finished with 23.

“I thought it would be a part of their gameplan to go inside,” Morgan said. “They executed, they made their shots, and they did what they needed to do.”

ISU guard Curtis Stinson finished with 22 points, 10 rebounds and five assists, cracking the 20-point, 10 rebound mark for the third time this season.

He became the third member of the Big 12 to score 1500 points, 400 rebounds and 200 steals in his career.

Still, even with Stinson’s help, the Cyclones second half run wasn’t enough to come back and win the game.

“When you make a run like that, you feel like it’s anybody’s game,” Stinson said. “They executed well, and we had to play catch up, and it’s hard to do that.”

With Iowa State’s NCAA tournament hopes erased, postseason hopes lie in the National Invitation Tournament.

Morgan said the Cyclones would accept an invitation to play in the NIT – if they receive one – especially given the youth of the team.

“If we had an opportunity to play in the NIT, I would like to do it because we have a lot of young players who can benefit from the experience,” Morgan said. “It would also give us a platform to get an extra springboard into next season.

“I think that any experience that we can get that would help us prepare for the future is a positive.”

Shawn Taggart, who only logged eight minutes in Thursday’s game – none in the second half – said it’s been a rough season for him, since he fell ill at the beginning of the season.

“It’s been a bad season for me,” Taggart said. “It’s just like, I’ve been playing bad, I haven’t had a breakout game or anything like that.

“I had a bad season.”

Morgan said it was his decision to not play Taggart in the second half.

“I just didn’t think he was getting up and down the court as fast as he needed to,” Morgan said. “It was a pretty quick game and part of their gameplan was to beat us down the court for quick scores or layups.”

Iowa State finds out if it earned a bid to the NIT Sunday night.