After a “soft” performance last Saturday against No. 22 Tennessee, Iowa State gave Hilton Coliseum a performance with an upset over No. 15 West Virginia.

Here are the takeaways from Iowa State’s 93-77 win over the Mountaineers.

An assist machine

The Cyclones lost its leading assist player for the game as redshirt junior Nick Weiler-Babb sat out with tendonitis in his knee. Even though he was out, Iowa State managed to record 20 assists.

The assists came from four different players who found the post players in the paint and connected on a few alley-oop plays.

Donovan Jackson had seven assists, Lindell Wigginton and Zoran Talley Jr. each had five assists and Jakolby Long finished with three. Coach Steve Prohm was happy with 20 assists on 36 field goals made.

The passing had to be a central point for the Cyclones tonight against a West Virginia team that presses and expects to get turnovers. Tonight, the Mountaineers finished with two steals, which is a huge decrease compared to their average of 8.8 per game.

“We had 20 assists,” Prohm said. “You shoot for 60 percent assists and so we were probably close to that tonight.”

Iowa State had a 55.5 percent assist ratio with 20-for-36, so Prohm will be looking for more passes on Saturday at Baylor.

The starting five scored, not the bench

Iowa State rearranged its starting lineup with the absence of Weiler-Babb. The Cyclones replaced him with Talley Jr. and that starting five took over the game.

The starting five played 175 minutes of the 200 in the game. That meant the bench wasn’t seen as much with only playing 25 minutes altogether and the most coming from Long with 11 minutes.

Since the bench didn’t play much, there weren’t many bench points that were scored. West Virginia had 17 bench points, while Iowa State recorded only seven and five of them came from Jeff Beverly.

The starting five shared the ball though as four of the five scored in double digits. Jackson had 25 points, Wigginton had 22 points, Cameron Lard finished with 18 points, Solomon Young ended the night with 14 points and Talley Jr. had seven.

Over the last three games with Texas Tech, Texas and Tennessee, the Cyclones have had 11, nine and 14 points respectively. Granted, Iowa State was with one less player against West Virginia, but Prohm will need to depend on that starting lineup, especially with Weiler-Babb being out for maybe another week.

“We played small and big tonight,” Prohm said. “But they executed, we’ve worked on it a little bit more these last couple of days [in practice].”

An unbelievable shooting night

West Virginia shot 43.3 percent from the field tonight.

The problem that the Mountaineers faced tonight was that Iowa State shot 62.1 percent from the field. The Cyclones went 36-for-58 from the field and that consistency helped Iowa State earn the upset.

This is the first time since Nov. 20, 2016, that Iowa State shot above 60 percent in a game and that last game was against The Citadel. It seemed like everything that went up for the Cyclones came down through the hoop.

Iowa State went 10-for-18 from the 3-point line, which equals 55.6 percent. Any time West Virginia made it close, the Cyclones would pull away with a couple of 3-pointers or a big alley-oop.

It was all Iowa State tonight and nothing could stop them.

“I think one, Iowa State played terrific,” said West Virginia coach Bob Huggins. “They had a great game plan. They played terrific.”