AMES – Following an explosive 57-point win against USC Upstate, the No. 20 Cyclones play their second-to-last home non-conference game against Central Michigan at noon Sunday.
Iowa State is undefeated at home through six games in Hilton Coliseum, and this game should be no different. Central Michigan is 3-5, most recently winning 68-57 against Concordia Ann Arbor, a Division I school in the National Christian College Athletic Association.
An area that has had a great correlation with the big wins that Iowa State has had is rebounding the basketball, especially on the offensive glass. In the most recent win over USC Upstate, the Cyclones had 45 rebounds compared to the Spartans’ 37. On the opposite end, Iowa State had 32 rebounds in the 40-point loss against South Carolina, which had 46.
“The emphasis on rebounding, if you rebound, you have a chance in the game, but just matching the intensity,” redshirt sophomore forward Alisa Williams said. “Hard work, can’t get outworked.”
Williams averages four rebounds a game, with 1.7 of them coming on the offensive glass. The Cyclones are outrebounding their opponents by an average of 4.6 per game. Rebounding was one of the focuses for Iowa State in the USC Upstate game.
“We had two offensive priorities, limiting our turnovers, we only had six, and trying to offensive rebound, we had 17,” head coach Bill Fennelly said. “Those are the two things that, to our player’s credit, we talked a lot about going in the game and both of those happened.”
Iowa State has a loss to South Carolina and a loss at Northern Iowa, but it is not just pushing those out of its head, but rather taking it as an opportunity to learn heading into the next games.
“We let those stick with us because those were big games that we wanted,” freshman guard Reagan Wilson said. “Just realizing that’s not how we want to play our season, you know, just kind of turning around at practice and then turning around at games to show that’s not who we’re going to be.”
Central Michigan proves to be another opportunity for Iowa State to test some new lineups and figure some things out in some final non-conference tests against Iowa and UConn before heading into Big 12 play.
Jess Lawson and Madi Morson lead the way for the Chippewas, both averaging 11 points per game. One of the senior guards for Central Michigan, Lisa Tesson, is a former teammate of Sydney Harris who spent her freshman year at Central Michigan.
“I’m sure there is a little bit of added whatever for [Harris],” Fennelly said. “She loved her time at Central Michigan, it was just time for her to try something different.”
Harris was the Mid-American Conference freshman of the year in her season with the Chippewas and has proved to be an efficient scorer for the Cyclones this year. She is knocking down shots from beyond the arc at a 52% rate, the highest on the team with the fifth-most attempted.
The Cyclones look to build off sophomore Audi Crooks’ double-double and 57-point win against Central Michigan at noon Sunday. The game will be streamed live on ESPN+.
