Just as finals week ends, the ISU men’s basketball team will be starting its own tests as a tough stretch of its nonconference schedule commences.

Iowa State rounded out the first portion of its schedule Saturday by defeating Liberty 76-58, finishing a 5-0 start to the season. The start gives head coach Wayne Morgan the distinction of being the first men’s basketball head coach in ISU history to start his first season 5-0.

“[Starting] 5-0 is a whole lot better than 1-4. I like where we are. We have improved,” Morgan said. “Given some of the great coaches who have coached here, that is an honor to hold that distinction.”

The Cyclones will be hitting the road for the first time Saturday, playing at Drake, and will play three of their next four games on the road, with games at Virginia and San Diego State following a home match with Xavier.

“The games coming up now are games against really good teams, and we’ll see how much we’ve improved,” Morgan said. “The teams that we are going to play now are going to show us what we need to get better at and/or work on to get ready for conference play.”

Iowa State hasn’t beaten Drake at the Knapp Center in its last three trips. Last season, the Cyclones defeated the Bulldogs at home 76-55.

Junior center Jared Homan said the team has gotten off on the right foot this year.

“Last time, the guys couldn’t get it done [at Drake], but hopefully we can do it this year. They have a great coach, but I think we’ve gotten off to the right step,” Homan said. “We’ve had some easier teams to play against. UNI was obviously a tougher team to play against, but I think this helped us prepare, especially a young team and some older guys mixed together, get a little chemistry.”

The opening half of the Liberty game stayed close with neither team taking a commanding lead. Ahead by four with just eight minutes remaining, Iowa State outscored the Flames 16-3 to lead 32-15 with just under two minutes left.

Liberty scored seven straight before intermission and trailed Iowa State 32-22.

“I thought that in the first half there were times that we missed shots that we would normally make, but our defense was pretty good and it gave them a hard time scoring,” Morgan said. “Our defense enabled us to get to a point where we could have a 10-point lead at halftime.”

With 12 minutes left in the second half, Liberty had cut Iowa State’s lead down to six. But the Cyclones answered by scoring 18 unanswered points in the next four and a half minutes to lead 60-38.

“Coach was just like, ‘The next five minutes are going to be real tough so we just have to dig in, play real good D and get in transition and get some easy baskets, build our lead up,'” freshman point guard Will Blalock said.

After taking the commanding lead, the Cyclones never trailed and took the 76-58 win.

“For some spurts in there, we were playing a little slow,” Homan said. “The second half we made a run, got up and down the court and that’s how we like to play.”

Morgan said the team has gotten better at defense and he hopes it keeps improving.

“We’ve just really noticed that they are really now starting to get into position, really starting to help each other now,” Morgan said. “If we keep improving and get to the point where we can play 40 minutes like that, we’re going to be pretty good.”