A fifth straight road loss plagued Iowa State men’s basketball on Wednesday, but now the team is returning to Hilton Coliseum to take on Oklahoma State.

The Cyclones hold a 12-0 record at home, and have won all but one of the games by 10 or more.

This is not the first time the Cowboys and Cyclones have matched up, Oklahoma State overcame a 16-point deficit to pick up the win. The win has sparked Oklahoma State since, winning four of its next five games, moving to 6-5 in Big 12 play.

The Cyclones have let teams get inside, resulting in fouls, free throws and players getting in foul trouble.

Fouls have been an issue for Iowa State both at home and on the road; however, it has affected the team exponentially more on the road.

“We need to do a better job of not committing unnecessary fouls,” Otzelberger said. “As much as we want to do things like offensive rebound, once we’re blocked out, like we don’t need to have an unnecessary push in the back or things to put us at a greater disadvantage.”

Something to watch from Oklahoma State’s perspective is how Cowboy forward Kalib Boone performs. Boone has been a key to the recent success for the team, and has provided inside scoring to go along with the strong shooting from Bryce Thompson.

In the previous meeting between the teams, Thompson struggled, scoring just one point and suffering an injury early on. Boone was able to help make up for this, holding his own in the paint and picking up 13 points.

“When they’re making threes, and then when their bigs are making jumpshots away from the goal, that makes a lot of challenging decisions,” Otzelberger said.

As of late, Boone has been even better, leading the team in scoring and rebounding on multiple occasions during the winning stretch.

Back-to-back home games for the Cyclones could help the team to solve the issues they have been having. The last time Iowa State has had two home games in a row was back in December against Western Michigan and Baylor. The Cyclones came out of these games and won two Big 12 road games in a row against Oklahoma and TCU. How much of a factor having some time in Ames played may be unclear, yet the comfortability could allow Iowa State to work on some different things in practice.

The game is set to begin at 5 p.m. Saturday and can be watched on ESPN 2.