Despite a career-high 41 points from senior Lindsey Wilson, the ISU women’s basketball team couldn’t pull out a win against Colorado Wednesday night, as the Cyclones fell to the Buffaloes, 79-71.

Wilson became practically the only scoring option for Iowa State in the second half, scoring 31 of the team’s 41 points after halftime.

Head coach Bill Fennelly was proud of Wilson’s performance, but unhappy with the her teammates’ lack of offensive support.

“You tell your team, you tell everybody you talk to, one player can’t win a game,” he said. “Lindsey Wilson almost won the game by herself. She had no help tonight.”

Sophomore Anne O’Neil, who was the team’s only other double-figure scorer with 11 points, says as Wilson goes, the team goes.

“Lindsey’s the kind of player that’s going to take over no matter what, especially in a close game,” O’Neil said. “The game dictates what she does. She’s got the ball in her hands, she dictates our offensive style.”

Wilson said she wasn’t looking to take over the game, but that it just happened that way. “It just seemed like we were not in the flow at all offensively. I was just trying to win,” she said. “I was trying to attack. Traditionally against Colorado, I always shot a lot of threes, I wasn’t getting those today.”

The Cyclones led 30-28 at halftime and Wilson scored the first basket of the second half. Then the ISU offense hit a wall. The Buffaloes went on a 23-6 run, balancing the inside game of Colorado’s 6-foot-5 center Tera Bjorklund, with the outside attack of 5-foot-6 point guard Maria Billingsley.

Bjorklund led the Buffaloes with 22 points and nine rebounds, and when she wasn’t scoring, she was kicking out to Billingsley, who finished with 17 points, including three three-pointers.

Fennelly said his team’s defense was what opened up the outside game for Colorado. “We were trying to double-team. It’s kind of the way our season’s been,” Fennelly said. “They have a lot of offensive weapons. As soon as we double-teamed, they kicked it out and made some big shots. We just couldn’t guard them the second half.”

Iowa State trailed by 13 after the spurt by Colorado. They slowly chipped away at the lead when the game was stopped due to a shot-clock malfunction with about 12 minutes left. After a five-minute delay, the game was continued with a manual shot clock and an announcer countdown from the 10-second mark.

Both teams stalled on offense for a couple possessions, then Wilson took over. During the final stretch, Wilson scored 19 points, making six shots in a row at one point for the Cyclones.

Fennelly changed the lineup to help with the scoring, but they sacrificed giving a big size advantage to Colorado.

“We had to go small to get some offense, and they could throw over the top of us,” he said. “The key though, we get [Colorado’s lead] to four points, and we give up four offensive rebounds in a row. That hurt.”

Wilson says the recognition of having a 41-point game is not the kind of reward she was looking for. “It’s good to feel that you fought, and you did what you could,” she said. “It was a loss. It’s not a very good consolation.”

The Cyclones will play their final home game of the season on Saturday when they host Nebraska.