The questions about whether Bryce Dejean-Jones would be the next impact transfer under Hoiberg came early and often. In the exhibition game, mumblings of ‘ballhog’ and ‘selfish’ seemed to outweigh the positive talk.

Against UMKC, Dejean-Jones showed that taking matters into his own hands may be exactly what the team needs when times get tough. After shooting over 60 percent for much of the first half, the Cyclones couldn’t get shots to fall for much of the rest of the game.

That is, Cyclones not named Bryce Dejean-Jones.

After shooting a perfect 8-for-8 against Arkansas, Dejean-Jones continued his hot shooting, scoring a game-high 22 points on 9-of-12 shooting. When points were needed, he delivered.

“It was just looking for opportunities,” Dejean-Jones said. “Opportunities presented themselves and I took advantage of it.”

After taking home the Big 12 Newcomer of the Week award last week, along with Georges Niang’s Big 12 Player of the Week award, the two combined for much of the same, despite UMKC shutting down Niang’s scoring numbers for much of the game.

But when shots weren’t falling, Niang found a way to become a force, leading the team with seven assists and seven rebounds. 

With 15 assists in his last two games, Niang is becoming even more of a threat with the ball in his hands, whether he’s shooting or sharing. Spacing and sharing has been Hoiberg’s mantra from the beginning, and through seven games of ranking inside the top 10 for assists per game, the Cyclones are keeping the tradition alive.

“We’ve got a lot of unselfish guys on our team,” said forward Dustin Hogue. “When we give up one shot to get a better shot, it’s going to result in good shots for everybody.”

But when shots weren’t falling, the defense started to see its share of struggles as well. Wide open shots and offensive rebounds littered the floor at times in the second half and marred what coach Fred Hoiberg said was a good defensive performance for much of the first half.

“I don’t know what we were doing out there in the second half,” said ISU coach Fred Hoiberg. “We had a stretch there where it just wasn’t us. … It looked like when my twins played soccer, when everybody ran towards the ball.”

The mistakes were uncharacteristic — a far stretch from Iowa State’s 18-point win over a ranked Arkansas foe less than a week before. With just a few days to polish up their play before traveling across state to take on the Iowa Hawkeyes in the Cy-Hawk game, the team hopes to learn from those mistakes heading into what will be the team’s biggest test of the season.

“I think we thought we could put it on cruise control,” Niang said of the UMKC game. ”I think we have yet to play a 40-minute game, and we can’t let that happen because we’re going to need our best game to play against Iowa.”