Foul trouble caused problems in Iowa State’s loss to Texas

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LUKE LU

Iowa State junior Ashley Joens shoots the ball against the University of Oklahoma on Jan. 17 at Hilton Coliseum. Joens scored 32 points in a 64-63 win for Iowa State.

Megan Teske

In an aggressive game between the Cyclones and the Longhorns that saw Texas get a 70-59 victory over Iowa State, fouls were the difference between winning or losing Saturday night.

Iowa State had 15 total fouls, while Texas had 19 total fouls in the game.

The Cyclones finished the night shooting 9-14 on free-throw shooting while the Longhorns went 8-11.

Head Coach Bill Fennelly said they needed to make more free throws early on and had to do more things to score as well.

Fennelly said foul trouble was one of the big differences in the game Saturday night, and the early fouls hurt the team.

Both junior guard Ashley Joens and freshman guard Kylie Feuerbach sat down midway through the first quarter after they both picked up two fouls early in the game.

“We gotta be smarter, we gotta not put ourselves in that position,” Fennelly said. “… We committed some silly fouls and… we gotta shore that up.”

Joens sat the final seven-and-a-half minutes of the first quarter while Feuerbach came in for the final two-and-a-half minutes of the quarter.

In the second quarter, Joens picked up her third foul about three minutes into the quarter and sat the rest of the half.

Joens finished with a team-high 17 points and five rebounds in the game in 19 minutes, and Head Coach Bill Fennelly said having her sit so long made a difference in the game.

“I think any team, if you take your best player out for half the game it’s hard,” Fennelly said. “But we’ve gotta figure that out and we’ve gotta figure out ways to score.”

Fennelly added that defense is a lot different when Joens isn’t in the game because they don’t have to double team, and said they have to be more creative on ways to score.

Joens said it’s difficult to get back into the flow of the game after sitting for so long, but that you just have to keep competing.

“You can’t really change what happened,” Joens said. “What happened happened and you just gotta move on and keep playing and competing and going out there and doing everything you can.”