His team may not have played like the Los Angeles Lakers, but head coach Wayne Morgan’s ISU team did enough to win this weekend’s Cyclone Challenge, and win convincingly at that.

“There’s nothing that we’re doing that we can’t do better,” Morgan said. “If we were, we’d be the Lakers.”

Idaho State (Saturday)

In Saturday’s championship game, Iowa State took on Idaho State, the winner over Arkansas-Little Rock in Friday’s game.

Although the Cyclones eventually won the game 73-47, they started poorly, keeping the first half fairly close before a late run put them ahead 33-22 at halftime.

Iowa State opened the second half with a 20-6 run and led the rest of the game.

Once again, Vroman, voted the 2003 Cyclone Challenge Most Valuable Player, led the team in scoring with 18 points. Sullivan added 15 points but missed his first several shots in the first half.

“You don’t want to start a game 0-for-5 or whatever it was, but it happens, you keep shooting and they start going in,” Sullivan said.

Early in the first half, the Cyclones had a scoring drought of over five minutes, but only fell behind 14-10 due to good defense.

“I just said we were missing shots that we would normally make, and if we were not going to make those shots, then we are going to have to play better defense and going to have to give them one shot,” Morgan said.

Sullivan said scoring droughts just happen in basketball.

“In the Big 12, you can go 10 minutes without scoring, that’s just the game,” Sullivan said. “You have to have great players around you like Jackson that can pick it up until you get it going.”

Morgan said his team’s depth was integral in the Cyclones’ domination of Idaho State in the second half.

“Our depth definitely helped us, the fact we were able to put fresh bodies in that can continue to play at a fairly efficient level was big,” Morgan said. “There was a time there where we’d get lay-ups because they were tired.”

Indiana-Purdue-Fort Wayne (Friday)

Iowa State opened the four-team tournament with a 78-51 win over Indiana-Purdue-Fort Wayne Friday night, holding the Mastodons to 31 percent shooting from the floor. The Cyclones made more than half of their shots for the evening.

Jackson Vroman returned to the starting lineup for the first time since his suspension, leading Iowa State in points and rebounds for the game with 17 and 11, respectively. The Cyclones again finished with a handful of players scoring in double figures as Jake Sullivan and Curtis Stinson each chipped in 13 points. Jared Homan and Marcus Jefferson also finished with strong performances, tallying 14 and 10 points, respectively.

Iowa State also won the rebounding battle for the first time this season, outrebounding the Mastodons 45-36.

Although his team is now 4-0, Morgan knows that his competition will keep improving and his Cyclones will need to improve as well to keep winning.

“Everyday I look at where we are and everyday I say we’ve got to get better and then we work at what we need to improve,” Morgan said. “We’re making progress.”