The Iowa State men’s basketball team outscored the Yugoslavian Select team 85-70 in an exhibition contest on Sunday afternoon, but even more apparent was the fact that the ISU second team outscored the Cyclone starters 52-33.

ISU starters were Lee Love and Jerry Curry, while the frontcourt consisted of Stevie Johnson, Klay Edwards and Tony Rampton.

Coach Tim Floyd rotated his teams in groups of five throughout the game, with the starters trailing on the scoreboard 16-11 with 13:20 left in the first half.

The second squad, of Paris Corner, Delvin Washington, Brad Johnson, Marcus Fizer and Paul Shirley came in, and when their minutes expired, the team had knotted the score at 26. At halftime, the teams were deadlocked at 38-38.

Coach Tim Floyd said the line-ups were not a true measure of who would be starting, but he just wanted to watch the players compete.

“I wanted to see them just like everybody else. It appeared the second group really used their athleticism to a great degree,” he said.

The athleticism and strength of the second team was most notable in the first few minutes of the second half. Fizer controlled the second half’s first three and a half minutes, notching 10 points and dishing out an assist as the Cyclones raced out to a 49-41 lead.

Adding to the fire were back-to-back dunks by Shirley and Brad Johnson, which forced a Yugoslavian timeout with 15:16 left and the score 55-41.

Fizer, a freshman forward, said his unit clicked because they played aggressively and as a team.

“I was comfortable with that group. We didn’t start, which wasn’t a big factor, but we got out and we had to kind of pick it up a little bit because we were down,” Fizer said.

“We had to play defense very, very hard. I’m happy for what we accomplished today. We just did whatever we had to do to get the job done,” he said.

Shirley said the difference was in the way his squad played defense.

“I think that we did do a little better job playing defense and I think that’s the key to winning any game,” he said.

After the early second-half spurt, the Cyclones never looked back and led by as many as 20 points.

Fizer posted a double-double in his first game for the Cyclones. He closed as ISU’s high scorer with 19 points and leading rebounder with 13.

Floyd was impressed with the play of his highly-touted rookie.

“He’s an effort guy. The sky’s the limit for him. He’s got an awful lot to his game,” Floyd said. “I thought he was very aggressive and we’re going to have to build on that.”

Shirley added 15 points, while Rampton hooped 14. Stevie Johnson, the team’s leading returning scorer, added only two points and two boards.

Floyd said he was happy with the aggressiveness of Shirley, Rampton and Edwards. He said the ability to put the ball in underneath the bucket was encouraging.

Shirley said his aggressiveness in the exhibition game will be something Cyclone fans will see all season.

“I’m trying to be more aggressive in general, not necessarily scoring, but rebounding and defense,” he said.

Floyd said the game’s downsides were on the half-court motion offense and guarding the dribble, which Floyd said were “the two things we probably worked hardest on.”

He said the team struggled so much moving the ball and setting screens on offense at the beginning of the game that the team had to scrap its offensive game plan.

“We ended up running a bunch of junk for the final 32 minutes of the game to just go get a basket or two,” Floyd said.

He said the team needed to turn it up on defense in order to get some easy baskets “because they were not going to come out of our half-court motion offense.

“I think there were some lessons to be learned for our basketball team. We can get a lot from this game. I think there has been a change in our team from the shoot-out a week ago,” Floyd said.

“Our team has got an awful long way to go. There’s still a lot of growth that we’ve got to get into this basketball team.”

Shirley agreed, but said the team is starting to put the 10 new faces into one cohesive unit.

“I think we’ve grown a lot. I think we’re getting there,” Shirley said.