Matching up with Baylor in the past few seasons has been no easy task for the Cyclones.

No. 25 Baylor (18-7, 7-5 Big 12) has won four of the last five meetings with No. 13 Iowa State (18-7, 7-5 Big 12), including a five-point loss at Hilton Coliseum earlier this season.

And to make matters worse, Baylor lost at home against unranked Texas Tech by 18 points Saturday. Point guard Monté Morris said this makes Tuesday’s game in Waco, Texas, a little more difficult.

“If you put ourselves in their shoes, we’d be hungry too to prove something to everybody,” Morris said. “It’s going to be tough.”

Forward Georges Niang agreed with Morris. He doesn’t like being in that situation either. But as the visiting team, he knows they will have to be ready to go.

“When you lose at home, you’re not going to be too thrilled going into your next game,” Niang said. “I’m sure we’re going to get their best punch. I’m sure coach Drew will have them ready to go.”

Baylor coach Scott Drew is known for setting his team up in different zone defenses — especially unusual ones.

Last time against the Cyclones, the Bears played a triangle-and-2 defense, where they picked two people to play man-to-man while the others play a zone.

The defense, an uncommon one around the NCAA, gave Iowa State some problems last time, which gave Baylor more than 20 transition points in the game.

While he’s seen them before and knows how the defensive schemes work, Morris said it’s harder to go against just because they don’t get any practice with it. That, he said, is what makes Baylor so challenging to play against.

“Don’t nobody really go triangle-and-2 or a box-and-1,” Morris said. “They will probably just face guard you and keep the same principles. But I think that’s why it’s so hard because we don’t see it every day. And we don’t know who the triangle will be on. So that makes it tough too.”

ISU coach Steve Prohm said it doesn’t matter which defense the Bears show, but rather how they respond to each situation.

“We’ve got to be ready for every scenario,” Prohm said. “We watched film yesterday with the guys, some things from last game and things that they’re doing right now and how we want to defend things. I think our guys will respond to the challenge.”

Both Morris and Prohm noted how big this game can be for the Cyclones, too. With only six games left in the regular season, every win counts. But, for the most part, the schedule is favorable for the Cyclones.

Iowa State will host TCU, Oklahoma State and Kansas State — all of whom are unranked. While they still have to travel to No. 10 West Virginia and No. 2 Kansas, picking up a win on the road at Baylor could set the Cyclones up for a late-season push.

Morris even thinks a win at Baylor could be enough to push the Cyclones to the top of the conference standings by the end of the season — something that has him eying the final game of the season in Lawrence, Kan.

“I think if we win [against Baylor], with the games coming up if we can take care of business and go down to Lawrence later and hopefully tie [the conference] up down there,” Morris said. “It is what it is. We just have to play basketball and win games.”