AMES – With a rough first half under their belt, the No. 4 Cyclones found their momentum with a 16-point scoring run early in the second half, to secure a 66-62 win over the Hawkeyes.
The Cyclones came off a sloppy first half, where they shot 33% from the field and 20% from deep. Alongside their inability to limit Iowa’s offensive movement and leaving wide-open threes for the Hawkeyes to capitalize on, Iowa State ended the first half trailing 33-25.
However, something changed at halftime. Although it appeared to be a normal halftime and Iowa State head coach T.J. Otzelberger did not yell, the Cyclones found a spark that helped boost their confidence for the second half.
“We’ve been in spots before at halftime where the game was tight, not where we were down like that,” Otzelberger said. “We talked about it at half like that was more adversity than we have had at halftime in any game this year.”
“It was a pretty normal halftime,” senior guard Tamin Lipsey said. “He didn’t come in and yell at us or anything like that; it was kind of we knew what we had to do, we knew we didn’t perform how we wanted to.”
Back on the court after the 10-minute break, freshman guard Killyan Toure started Iowa State’s second-half momentum with a two-point jump shot. Shortly after, he made a free throw to shorten the score gap, leaving the Cyclones to trail five points behind Iowa.
Not long after, senior forward Joshua Jefferson made a driving layup, followed by a free throw to boost the score 33-31.
However, it was the layup by Lipsey to tie up the game at the 7:54 minute mark. 30 seconds later, Lipsey made a two-point jump shot off an opponent turnover to give the Cyclones a lead, after trailing for nearly 18 minutes.
“The main focus coming out at halftime was defensively just getting stops, pushing the transition, trying to get easy buckets,” Lipsey said. “So we went on a big run, I don’t know what the run was, but we got the crowd involved.”
Off a steal by Jefferson, Toure used his speed to sprint down the court to make a dunk on the fastbreak off an opponent turnover to boost the score 37-33.
The whole roster had a field day as senior forward Eric Mulder was subbed in and secured two shots from behind the charity stripe.
Finishing the run on a high, junior forward Milan Momcilovic made a step-back second-chance jump shot to bring the Cyclones to a 41-33 lead in five minutes.
“You kind of knew that at some point there was going to be a run, like a violent run like that,” Iowa head coach Ben McCollum said. “Let’s just hang on, and then try to fight back and try to string a couple of your own stops together, and I thought our guys did a great job of that.”
After the scoring momentum that kept the Cyclone fans in Hilton on their toes, Iowa State found its groove and continued to demolish throughout the second half. Leading the offensive success was Jefferson, who secured a team-high 24 points after going 7-for-14 from the field, and found the most success from deep after going 3-for-6 and 7-9 from the charity stripe.
In the second half, Iowa State secured its largest lead of 10 points. Due to the team’s much improved shooting from the first 20 minutes, the Cyclones shot 54.5% from the field, 60% from deep and 73.9% from the charity stripe.
“Every game means a lot to us,” Jefferson said. “Every single time we step on the floor, it doesn’t matter who we’re playing, we’re going to go out there and give it our best shot.”
