ISU women’s basketball is back on top of the Big 12, a position Bill Fennelly is no stranger to. In nine years of coaching the Cyclones, his team has finished in first or second place four times, and has gone to the NCAA tournament six times.

They are 15-2, second in the Big 12 and are coming off a 12-game win streak that equaled the longest in school history.

But students still don’t go to the games. There is a small loyal student fan base, but the majority of people in the stands aren’t college age. However, Iowa State does rank pretty high on the national attendance scale for women’s basketball. They ranked ninth last year, averaging 8,021 people a game.

Student participation could really boost those numbers, and these women deserve support.

This is a team that can compete with any team in the nation, more so this year than in the past.

Until this season, Tennessee, UConn, LSU, Texas Tech, and Duke pretty much played for the title every year. This year, the last unbeaten team in the country was Iowa, who handed Iowa State its first loss, but has since dropped out of the polls.

The parity is especially evident in the Big 12. Texas Tech, Texas and Baylor, the three teams picked to contend for the conference title, each have one or two losses.

The Cyclones have yet to play anybody from the South Division, but they have the guns to beat anyone.

Katie Robinette controls the middle of the lane while living up to the potential she showed as a freshman at Nebraska, where she was voted preseason Big 12 rookie of the year.

Anne O’Neil is doing everything right. She is leading the team in scoring, rebounding, steals and is second in assists.

Two other players are also scoring in double digits — senior Mary Fox and sophomore Megan Ronhovde.

The balanced scoring means that other teams can’t focus on stopping only one player from scoring — there are four others who can all do some damage.

These next two weeks will really be a big test for how this team will fare the rest of the year. They finally get into the South Division, and have to play at Texas Tech as well as at Baylor.

A trip to Nebraska is sandwiched between those games, to an arena that Baylor lost at earlier this year.

This team is good.

It is following the blueprint that Fennelly has laid for all of his teams in the past, focusing on three main points. Don’t turn the ball over (only 15 turnovers a game), play stingy defense (allowing 57.4 points per game) and shoot the long ball (.395 on the season from 3-point range).

So give the good basketball team at Iowa State some love, already.

They made a run to the final four of the women’s NIT last year, and have all the tools they need to make the same run in the Big Dance now.