On paper, a shootout seemed likely for Sunday’s WNIT second round game between Iowa State and Northern Illinois.

Both teams put up huge offensive numbers in their respective openers, with Iowa State scoring 95 points against Niagara and NIU dropping 89 points against Yale, and the two teams played a high-scoring affair against each other two years ago. Iowa State won that game 97-89.

Add in established stars like Iowa State’s Bridget Carleton and NIU’s Courtney Woods, who scored 38 against Yale, and no one would blame fans for expecting offensive fireworks once again on Sunday. Instead, however, they got a 70-60 defensive struggle, where one of the only similarities from 2016 was an Iowa State victory.

“I thought our game plan was executed really well,” said Iowa State coach Bill Fennelly. “We went into the game and tried to guard [Mikayla] Voigt and Woods and they only made two threes. They made nine in the last game. They had 22 points, and they had 55 in the last game. Coach [Jodi] Steyer did a great job of scouting them.”

As a whole, Iowa State held NIU to under 31 percent shooting from the field and to 23 percent shooting from beyond the arc. The Cyclones also had a total of 10 blocks in the game, with four of those coming from Carleton, who had another spectacular performance with 21 points, 13 rebounds and six assists.

As great as Carleton was, perhaps just as good was sophomore Madison Wise, who was tasked with guarding Woods for much of the game. Wise didn’t have eye-popping numbers, but she succeeded in limiting Woods’ to 10 points on 4-of-11 shooting. She also held Woods to 0-for-4 shooting from three.

Just as important, Wise also kept Woods off of the free-throw line for the most part. Against Yale, Woods hit all 14 free throw she attempted, which proved to be the difference in the game. Against the Cyclones, Woods shot three free throws.

To top it all off, Wise also had five of the Cyclones’ nine points in the fourth quarter, scoring back-to-back clutch baskets with the Huskies climbing back into the game late.

“I thought Madi was, maybe at both ends of the court, as good as she’s been here in a long time,” Fennelly said. 

When asked how she was able to guard Woods with such success, Wise quickly credited her coaching staff and her trust in their preparation.

“Our coaches came up with a great game plan,” Wise said. “Just listen to the coaches, they know what’s best.”

Offensively, the Cyclones had quite a bit of success up until that nine-point fourth quarter. Until that, the team had shot over 50 percent from the field for the entire game and held a comfortable 16-point lead heading into the final frame.

Thankfully for the Cyclones, that lead proved to be insurmountable. Still, however, Fennelly said that the team got a little bit lucky that they were up by so much, and that scoring so few points in a quarter will likely lead to future losses if it becomes a trend.

“You’re going to be lucky to win games scoring nine points in a quarter,” Fennelly said. “Luckily we had a big enough lead, and you’ve got to attribute Northern Illinois for how hard they played, especially in the fourth quarter.”

Though the offense was lacking in the final quarter, the Cyclones can be encouraged by the fact that, for the second straight game, scoring options outside of Carleton emerged.

In addition to the 12 points and clutch baskets by Wise, sophomore Kristin Scott also pitched in another 15 points on 7-of-12 shooting. This comes on the heels of Ashley Joens and Ines Nezerwa scoring 16 and 14 points against Niagara, respectively.

That kind of diversity when it comes to scoring is big for a team that heavily relied on Carleton to pick up most of the slack offensively last season. The team will have to prove it can be consistent in that regard going forward, but Carleton said that she’s already noticing a difference from last season to this one.

“It’s fun to play with all these girls because we can all shoot the ball and we can all put up points,” Carleton said. “It’s a fun team to be on.”