The Big 12 Championship will kick off its 21st tournament Wednesday night when TCU takes on Oklahoma at 6 p.m. at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Missouri.

Throughout 20 tournaments, there have been five different winners: Kansas (10), Oklahoma (3), Iowa State (3), Oklahoma State (2) and Missouri (2).

Here’s a look back at the three crowns for Iowa State. 

2000: The turnaround 

The 1999-2000 season has gone down as one of the best in Iowa State basketball history.

The Cyclones went 32-5 that season and barreled through to the Elite Eight round of the NCAA Tournament, taking the Big 12 Championship as a prize along the way. But the expectations didn’t start out with so much glamor. 

Iowa State was picked to finish sixth in the Big 12 during the preseason that year and sat unranked. The big reason was because of uncertainty. Larry Eustachy was in his second season coaching the Cyclones, and they had gone a measly 15-15 in the previous year, failing to make the NCAA Tournament.

Jamaal Tinsley had just transferred from Mt. San Jacinto College in California, and the Cyclones had lost a wealth of players in the offseason. It was just hard to get a gauge on how Iowa State would mesh.

“I don’t think people knew what to make of us. And I don’t know if I knew what to make of things,” said Paul Shirley, who played for the Cyclones from 1996-2001. “I don’t think we had a particular chip on our shoulder. But we assumed that we’d be pretty good because we had [Marcus] Fizer on our team. That was usually conducive to winning.”

Conducive to winning is right. 

After losing to Drake and No. 1 Cincinnati in the non-conference season, Fizer led the way for the Cyclones in Big 12 play, as they finished 14-2 in the conference and undefeated at Hilton Coliseum. Fizer wound up with Big 12 Player of the Year honors.

But Fizer’s goal wasn’t to get player of the year honors. His eyes were on the national championship, and he wanted to prove all of the team’s doubters wrong. 

At the beginning of the Big 12 Championship, Fizer was presented the player of the year trophy. But he quickly handed it off. He was dead set on his winning objective. 

“I remember being extremely pissed off,” Fizer said. “And we finished first [in the conference] outright and even though we finished in first, we weren’t projected to win the tournament and that upset me.

“I know that our name doesn’t ring bells like Kansas and Texas and all those other schools. We’ve had some respectable teams, and we just can’t get respect.”

The hype from the dominance in the season carried over into the postseason, at least among Iowa State fans. 2000 was just the fourth year of the Big 12 and Kansas had won the first three Big 12 Championships. But there was a different buzz around that year’s tournament, which was at the Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Missouri.

“I remember vividly how much excitement there was in the air,” said Shirley, who didn’t play in the tournament due to a broken foot. “Because Iowa State hadn’t been this good in a while. There was this kind of electricity in the air.”

The Cyclones, who entered the tournament as the No. 1 seed, rattled off three wins against Baylor, Oklahoma State and Oklahoma to grab the Big 12 title. Fizer was, once again, excellent, earning the championship’s most valuable player award. 

He broke a tournament record with 38 points against Baylor and put up 19 and 22 points across the next two games. 

When all was said and done that season, that uncertainty had given way to dominance. Tinsley won the Big 12 Newcomer of the Year award, and the Cyclones finished the season in the Elite Eight. They had improved their overall record by 17 games from the previous season. 

But overall, the team fell short of its goal. 

“We just had a ball club that I thought was going to win a national championship,” Fizer said. “When I first saw the national championship trophy, that’s what was the most important thing in my mind. 

“And that’s why the loss to Michigan State in the Elite Eight was so devasting because no one, besides them — and even deep inside, them too — thought they were going to win. That’s just life. You move on.”

2014 and 2015: Cementing a legacy

Monte Morris still watches videos of the shot all the time.

He calls it the best one of his career.

It was March 12, 2015, in the second round of the Big 12 Championship. The Cyclones had rallied back from a 10-point deficit against Texas in the final three minutes and 48 seconds of the game. But they were still one basket short of pulling off an improbable victory.

Out of a timeout, Morris took the ball up the court with clear intent — he only had about five seconds. It was an isolation play. It was all Morris. The rest of the team knew to stay away.

Morris pushed the ball inside the right side of the 3-point line and stopped on a dime. He jumped back to take his shot over a lunging Demarcus Holland.

Nothing but net.

‘Yeah, for sure. I’ve made a few buzzer-beaters, but in front of that crowd and making that shot, that one is at the top of the list,” Morris said last week. “I still get chills.”

That shot helped cement a legacy in the new decade of Big 12 Championships for the Cyclones, and the legacy of current seniors Morris, Naz Mitrou-Long and Matt Thomas. They went on to win that season’s Big 12 Tournament crown — their second straight conference tournament championship — but lose in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

The 2014 and 2015 championships are riddled with unlikely victories. In the semifinals of the 2014 Big 12 Championship, a No. 16 Iowa State took on a No. 10 Kansas amid a clash of cardinal and blue colors at the Sprint Center in Kansas City.

The Cyclones prevailed in an upset, and by double-digits, no less, 94-83. They went on to beat Baylor in the Big 12 Championship and roared all the way to the Sweet 16.

“[That win] was huge,” Mitrou-Long said. “I mean, it’s Kansas. Everybody looks at them in a different way, and they’ve earned that respect. I mean, 13-straight [conference titles] is not luck. But you come out and you beat the best by double-digits, it really makes a statement for your team and your program and what you believe in.”

In 2015, the Cyclones eked out a win against Oklahoma in the semifinals by just two points. And in the finals, against Kansas, Iowa State fought back from a 17-point deficit to win and cut down the nets in the Sprint Center once again. At that point, it was the fifth straight game the Cyclones came back and rallied for a victory.

But that may not have been the best part of it for Morris and Mitrou-Long, who are both entering their final Big 12 Championship as Cyclones.

Kansas City is known as “Hilton South” to many Cyclone fans, and they plan on that fan support guiding them through the tournament again.

“The best part about having senior night and playing my last game at Hilton is that it kind of wasn’t my last game,” Mitrou-Long said. “We have ‘Hilton South.’ And it is Hilton, just in a different location. How well we travel, that’s why I feel like we have an advantage over any team.”

But a championship or not this season, Mitrou-Long, Morris and Thomas have done their part to ensure an Iowa State legacy at the Big 12 Championship.

“For us to have those two wins under our belts, we’ll always be remembered as winners,” Mitrou-Long said. “And it comes to a place that deserves it most, and that’s Iowa State University.”