On an afternoon when the wood was less than kind to Iowa State, it was Monté Morris and Georges Niang who stepped up, forcing Texas Christian to step off the Hilton hardcourt on the short end of a 17-point loss.

Iowa State (16-4, 6-2 Big 12) routed TCU (14-7, 1-7 Big 12) by a score of 83-66, despite an ISU bench that struggled mightily.

Since the insertion of transfer Jameel McKay into the ISU lineup, the Cyclones have relied mostly on an eight-man rotation, which brought McKay off the bench along with forward Abdel Nader and guard Matt Thomas.

In the 10 games the ISU bench operated at full strength leading into the Jan. 31 contest against TCU, the three combined for more than 20.5 points per game. Against TCU, the bench failed to tally a point for more than 27 minutes of play until McKay finally found the net at roughly the 12:30 mark in the second half. It would be the 6-foot-9-inch forward’s only basket of the afternoon.

The ISU pine wrapped up the day with 13 total points, including nine from Nader, but many of those came after the Cyclones had stretched out a double-digit lead. It was a margin they would maintain over the course of the contest’s final nine minutes.

A lack of bench production was not the only game facet to uncharacteristically plague Iowa State. The Cyclones also posted only 14 assists, four below their season average, as compared to 13 turnovers. The ISU effort equated to an assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.07, well below the Big 12-leading 1.61 ratio the Cyclones carried with them into the matchup.

How then did Iowa State manage to earn its largest margin of victory through eight games of conference play? ISU coach Fred Hoiberg said it was because his team finally tapped into its killer instinct down the stretch.

“It was good to see us extend. That is the biggest thing tonight, was extending [the lead],” Hoiberg said. “It is a great sign when you can finish a game like that.”

Shouldering the load and carrying the team in the first half was Morris, who took over in an ugly opening 20 minutes for the Cyclones. Morris scored 12 of Iowa State’s 35 first-half points on 5-of-6 shooting, adding three assists and committing zero turnovers.

The rest of the squad failed to follow suit in the latter two categories, as the team posted five assists to eight turnovers in the first period. Iowa State sagged into the lane defensively against a TCU team that averaged fewer than three 3-point makes per game in conference play rolling into Hilton.

The Horned Frogs kept the game close by capitalizing on Iowa State’s defensive strategy, drilling four 3-pointers in the opening stanza. TCU’s 3-point proficiency, coupled with the eight ISU turnovers, kept the game tight headed into the locker room at 35-33.

Half number two belonged to the Wooden Award Watch List member Georges Niang. The junior forward led an aggressive charge out of halftime, attempting the Cyclones’ first two shots of the period and setting the tone for a second half that Iowa State ultimately ran away with.

“I thought we played much smarter in the second half,” Hoiberg said. “We were playing stupid in the first half trying to squeeze passes into small spaces [and] our spacing on the break was brutal. [The] second half was much better all across the board.”

Time after time, Hoiberg isolated Niang offensively and let him go to work, as he danced and dipped his way off of the dribble into the lane and finished relentlessly at the rim. Niang concluded his day with 23 points and eight rebounds — his first 20-plus point effort since Iowa State defeated Arkansas at Hilton on Dec. 4.

“Niang is a really, really good college basketball player,” said TCU coach Trent Johnson “If there is a better college basketball player in the country, I want to see him.”

Niang, who had struggled to open the Big 12 regular season, has now scored 42 points in his last two games on a combined 15-of-28 effort from the field.

“I felt I needed to be aggressive to get us going,” Niang said. “I feel like I am getting in a good rhythm.”

Niang’s shirking of his shooting woes could not have come at a better time for the Cyclones, as they head to Lawrence, Kan. on Feb. 2 for a re-match with their already once-vanquished foe, the Kansas Jayhawks.