`T for three’ busier than ever this year

Mark Pawlak

For every three-pointer made at Hilton Coliseum by the ISU men’s and women’s basketball teams, four T-shirts are thrown into the crowd by the Cyclone Spirit Squad.The Spirit Squad has gone through a lot of T-shirts this season.Luckily for them the last men’s and women’s games have been played on the road.Three-point shooting has been a factor in the success of ISU basketball this season, propelling both teams to first place in the conference standings.To find evidence of ISU’s long-range superiority, you need only look to the men’s game against Kansas and the women’s game against Nebraska. The men got a 79-77 victory against Kansas behind making 11 of 17 shots from behind the arc, shooting at a 64 percent clip.Kantrail Horton, Jamaal Tinsley, Jake Sullivan and Shane Power all hit shots from outside.Horton shot 4-for-4 draining one with 5:52 remaining in the game from the deep wing where the first “A” in “Kansas” was in the stenciled “Kansas Jayhawks” on the court. Tinsley made three from deep, including a huge one from the top of the key with 4:35 left in the game.The women used 10 first half three-pointers to beat Nebraska 92-70 Sunday. The first 11 ISU shot attempts were three-pointers.In that first half, the Cyclones took 30 shots and 22 of them were three-pointers. For the game, they made 14 three-point baskets and 16 two-pointers. The 36 three-point attempts the Cyclones took set an arena record, and the 14 made tied the arena record.Lindsey Wilson and Megan Taylor led the way with five made apiece. Both teams are among the best in the nation in three-point shooting.The men are second in the nation in three-point shooting percentage, through Monday’s games, according to statistics kept by the NCAA, hitting 43.6 percent of the time.Not to be outdone, the women are also second in the nation in three-point shooting percentage, shooting 43.5 percent from long distance.The women lead the nation in three-pointers made per game at 9.4.With Megan Taylor and Tracy Gahan leading the Cyclone women against Kansas tomorrow, and Jake Sullivan and Kantrail Horton heading the charge for the men against the Jayhawks, look out for long-range bombs hitting nothing but net and many T-shirts flying around Hilton Coliseum as the men battle for the conference lead.The ISU women will be back at Hilton to light it up from long-range this coming Tuesday as the Cyclones host Texas.