No. 20 Iowa State will try to duplicate its performance from earlier this season against Texas when it travels to square off against the 23rd-ranked Longhorns on Saturday in another Big 12 battle in Austin, Texas.
Both teams will enter Saturday’s game off losses. The Cyclones fell 70-61 at home to short-handed, 10th-ranked Kansas on Tuesday while Texas lost 77-64 at No. 14 Texas Tech in a heavyweight slugfest in Texas coach Chris Beard’s return to Lubbock.
Iowa State (16-6, 3-6) shot just 41.3 percent from the floor in its loss to the Jayhawks, who played without the conference’s leading scorer, Ochai Agbaji, because of COVID-19. The setback snapped the Cyclones’ two-game winning streak.
Iowa State forced Kansas into a season-high 22 turnovers but also allowed the Jayhawks to make 56 percent of their field-goal attempts.
Izaiah Brockington scored a game-high 24 points for the Cyclones, with Tre Jackson adding 12 and Gabe Kalscheur 11. Iowa State trailed by six at halftime after scoring just one basket over the final three minutes of the half and by 12 points with 15:35 to play.
Iowa State also was outscored in the paint 34-22 in Tuesday’s loss.
“Our rim protection wasn’t very good,” Iowa State coach T.J. Otzelberger said. “Whether it was the guards, the front-line guys … we got spread out, we didn’t rotate quick enough, and we weren’t physical enough. We’ve got to have intentionality and just rotate early and be willing to hit people with our lower body and be physical in there. We didn’t do that.”
The Cyclones checked all those boxes when they beat Texas 79-70 at home on Jan. 15. Iowa State has swept a regular season series with the Longhorns just once (2015).
Texas (16-6, 5-4) will head home after leading for just 29 seconds in its loss to Texas Tech on Tuesday. Marcus Carr led the Longhorns with 18 points — 15 in the second half — with Courtney Ramey adding 12, all in the first half, and Christian Bishop scoring 11 for Texas, which had a three-game winning streak snapped.
“Tuesday’s game was the ninth game of the 18-round fight,” Beard said afterward. “We make the turn here in early February. We gave ourselves a chance (in this game). I thought we withstood the emotional start to the game. We were right there after four or five minutes.
“First half, we had a stretch we’d sure like to get back. In the second half, we cut it to six points a couple of times and were right there. It was a good college basketball game. I wished we had played better. It wasn’t for a lack of effort. Our guys battled.”
The Longhorns entered Tuesday’s contest leading the nation in scoring defense at 54.5 points per game but allowed Texas Tech to surpass that output with 10:49 left in the game. Texas still leads the country at 55.5 points per game.
–Field Level Media