AMES – Iowa State battled back and forth against the Utes in Ames, but Utah pulled away and took down the Cyclones 75-67 Sunday night.
The loss brings Iowa State down to 10-6 overall and 1-2 in Big 12 play. It also gives the Cyclones their first home loss of the season after winning the first 10 games in Hilton Coliseum.
Sophomore center Audi Crooks led the way with 29 points and eight rebounds, and fifth-year senior guard Emily Ryan contributed 18 points, six assists and five rebounds. Sophomore forward Addy Brown filled the stat sheet with 10 points, eight assists and six rebounds as well.
Unfortunately for Iowa State, Utes forward Mayè Tourè had 24 points and nine rebounds of her own, including four 3’s, fueling the strong Utah offense and helping them outscore the Cyclones 23-18 in the fourth quarter.
“Start of the game, we were not guarding 21 [Tourè] on the 3-point line,” Iowa State head coach Bill Fennelly said. “Kid’s made eight all year made 20 in her life, so we weren’t going to go out there. That’s not what Audi [Crooks] can do anyway, she doesn’t really guard space.”
With Crooks, Ryan and Brown accounting for 57 of the team’s 67 points, it is hard to win games when opponents can key in on one or two players on the floor at a time.
“We sort of got 10 points out of the rest of the team, and with Emily Ryan only getting to play so many minutes, you’re really hurt, and Addy [Brown] didn’t have a great night offensively,” Fennelly said. “There’s a lot of things that we have to figure out or get better, but you can’t play in this league, or any league, probably, and have 10 points from the rest of your team.”
With the Cyclones’ fourth-highest scorer, junior guard Kenzie Hare, out for the year, it makes it hard for them to find any consistent scoring from role players.
“There’s nothing, nothing we can do about it except work harder,” Fennelly said. “Work, coach better, figure out a new system or something because I don’t think it’s going to change a whole lot with how people guard and how they’re going to guard Audi [Crooks].”
Junior guard/forward Sydney Harris has had games of 17 and 13 points, but her field goal attempts and scoring have been quite volatile at times. Outside of Harris and the obvious big three, no Cyclone has been close to being consistent on the scoring end.
Averaging 30 points per game through three conference games, Crooks became the fastest Cyclone to reach 1,000 career points ever. She hit the mark in her 49th career game, passing Cyclone great Ashley Joens.
Crooks has been carrying a majority of the workload, but it has been even more evident in conference play as she has scored slightly above 40% of the team’s points in Big 12 play, compared to 30% overall.
“Coach Fennelly was big on production needed outside of just the starting five, or as far as like our bench production,” Crooks said. “It can’t just be one or two or three people to win like that.”
In correlation to the lack of scoring outside of the trio, Iowa State has struggled from beyond the arc, shooting just 25% against the Utes.
“It’s been a tough stretch for us as a team overall, just a lot of extra time outside of the gym,” Brown said. “We know it’s going to fall, just a matter of time. We just gotta stay confident.”
Iowa State’s next two games reside in the state of Arizona, as the first game is in Tempe when the Cyclones take on the Arizona State Sun Devils at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. The game will be on ESPN+.
