Last night marked the opening games of the annual Cyclone Challenge, and Iowa State came out in fine fashion with a 57-36 win over University of Tennessee-Martin.

Coach Tim Floyd was pleased with ISU’s defensive effort, especially in the second half. “I thought we defended very well, had we not come out in the second half and defended, I really felt like we could get beat,” Floyd said.

The Cyclones got off to a slow start, losing the tip to the Skyhawks, but recovered to score the first points of the game on two free throws by forward Shawn Bankhead. Tennessee-Martin took a 4-3 lead on a free throw, but that would be the only time the Skyhawks were ahead.

“In the first half, we came out to play the good defense, but offensively, things weren’t going very well,” Cyclone guard Jacy Holloway said. “But we still stayed in defensively, and that got us through the first half.”

ISU took the lead for good on a turn-around jumper by Cyclone center Tony Rampton that made the score 5-4.

The ‘Clones increased their lead to 17-8 on ISU guard Dedric Willoughby’s second three-pointer of the game.

The Skyhawks brought the gap down to just three points with a little more than 3 minutes left in the first half, but Holloway hit his first three-pointer of the game to make the score 22-16.

Despite shooting 33 percent from the field in the first half, ISU went to the locker room at the break with a 25-19 lead over a Tennessee-Martin team that shot a measly 24 percent.

Floyd credited the low shooting percentage of ISU to the Skyhawks defense under the basket.

“We really had no inside touches, and credit Tennessee-Martin’s defense. They were well prepared,” Floyd said.

Holloway thought that Tennessee-Martin came well prepared.

“They have a good game plan. We expected them to come out and play as tough as they did,” Holloway said.

“We handled the press for the most part at the beginning of the first half, but then once we got into our half court offense, we weren’t getting as good as ball movement as we needed to, we let them dictate where the ball was going, instead of us shifting their defense a lot more with ball fakes and moving the ball quicker.

“They do a lot of things offensively that we try to do,” he said. “They set some very nice screens.”

“I thought that it was a good win. They are a very good team,” Edwards added.

“They applied great defensive pressure, and that was the reason for our poor shooting.”

ISU came out in the second half and improved its shooting percentage to 54 percent from the field, while the Skyhawks displayed more shooting woes with 27 percent.

The Cyclones opened the second half with a three-pointer by Holloway to take a nine point lead. Iowa State made the score 46-32 on a dunk by center Kelvin Cato that had the Cyclone fans cheering.

Willoughby hit his fourth three-pointer of the game to give the Cyclones a 19 point lead with 3 minutes left in the game.

ISU made the score 57-36 on a lay-up by guard DeAndre Harris with 5 seconds left, and that was the final score.

“It was one of those nights when we weren’t shooting very well, so we had to play extra hard defensively, and rebound the ball, and luckily we did those things tonight to get the win,” Edwards said.