No. 18 Iowa State will travel to Morgantown to face West Virginia this Wednesday at 6 p.m.

This season, West Virginia is 11-4 overall and 2-2 in conference play with losses coming against TCU and Texas.

Against now No. 11 Texas, the Mountaineers fell 70-58 at home.

Iowa State is coming off of a loss against Texas, but the Cyclones lost 64-62 in a game which came down to the final possession.

The loss against Texas was Iowa State’s first in the Big 12 and first home game the Cyclones have dropped all season. Overall, Iowa State is 13-3 and 3-1 in the Big 12.

Against West Virginia, coach Bill Fennelly said the Cyclones will be facing a team which plays hard and physical defense while forcing turnovers.

Offensively, Fennelly said West Virginia players Tynice Martin and Naomi Davenport will be difficult for the Cyclones to handle.

Martin is averaging 16.2 points, 6.1 rebounds and is connecting on 43.8 percent of her 3-point attempts this season.

Meanwhile, Davenport is averaging 14.8 points, 8.5 rebounds and 2.7 assists per game. In addition, Davenport is making 48.5 percent of her shots from the floor and 39.5 percent of her 3-point shots.

Fennelly said part of slowing down a player like Davenport is defensively not allowing her to take “rhythm” shots and forcing tough shots.

For Iowa State, sophomore forward Kristin Scott comes into the game on a hot streak.

“Someone told me [Scott’s stats] are video game-like right now,” Fennelly said. “She’s playing really well.”

In her last three games, Scott has been averaging 14.7 points, 6.7 rebounds, 1.3 blocks and a steal per game.

While Fennelly said Scott — who is shooting 45.2 percent from 3-point range — is effective at spacing the floor with her 3-point shooting ability, a large sum of her points have come from the charity stripe in recent games.

In the last three games, Scott has been averaging seven trips to the free throw line per game.

In those games, she has connected on 88.9 percent of those tries.

Both her attempts and shooting percentage from the free throw line are up from her season averages of 2.9 attempts and 76 percent made free throws.

Fennelly said Scott offers Iowa State an option in the post which is different from the other more traditional posts in Mere Burkhall and Ines Nezerwa.

Both Burkhall and Nezerwa lack the scoring punch Scott can provide.

Scott ranks second in points per game for the Cyclones this season with 12.1. Nezerwa ranks sixth averaging 6.9 points and Burkhall ranks seventh averaging 5.1 points per game.

So far this season, Burkhall, a senior, has been Iowa State’s starter at center while Scott has been the Cyclone’s first sub off of the bench. Fennelly said the biggest reason for Scott’s growth in scoring from her freshman to sophomore season is her confidence when shooting.

In her freshman year, Scott averaged 4.8 points, 5.2 rebounds and shot 65 percent from the free throw line and 14.6 percent from three while playing 3.6 fewer minutes compared to this season.

Fennelly said he attributed part of her hot shooting recently to being dominant in other areas of her game such as rebounding.

“She had more offensive rebounds than the Texas team did,” Fennelly said. “And sometimes when you do other things you are rewarded by the ball going into the basketball.”

Texas is one of the top offensive rebounding teams in the country and ranks 14th overall with an average of 17 per game.

Scott said after the loss to Texas that her mindset entering the game was if she was going to make an impact against the Longhorns, it would be by rebounding. 

With Scott, Iowa State has a player who has the ability to make an impact in any game with her scoring and rebounding ability.