Courtesy of Iowa State Athletic Communications
AMES, Iowa – The No. 22/18 Iowa State women’s basketball team won its fourth consecutive Big 12 contest and its second straight against Top 25 teams with a 63-56 victory over No. 11/12 Oklahoma Wednesday night at Hilton Coliseum. The win was the first over the Sooners in seven tries for ISU and the first for the ISU seniors. The Cyclones got out to a 12-point lead in the first half and withstood an Oklahoma scoring flurry in the second half to hold off the Sooners. With the win, Iowa State improved to 16-3 overall and 4-2 in the Big 12, putting ISU third in the league standings. Oklahoma fell to 14-5 overall and 4-2 in the conference. “We’ve had a lot of trouble beating OU for a lot of reasons,” ISU head coach Bill Fennelly said. “We didn’t just win a game, we won a game against people who do it the right way and I’m proud of our team for that. Our bench played the best it’s played in a while. Overall we did everything we had to do at the time we had to do it and I’m proud of our team.” The Cyclones had three players in double figures and three players with five or more rebounds. Kelsey Bolte and Anna Prins each scored 15 points, while Alison Lacey finished with 12, including 10 points in the first half. Freshman Jessica Schroll finished with a career-high 11 rebounds to go with her four points. Chelsea Poppens also turned in seven rebounds. Oklahoma had three players in double figures, led by Nyeshia Stevenson’s 14 points. Amanda Thompson finished with a double-double with 12 points and 10 rebounds for OU. Iowa State shot 37.8 percent from the field and 43.8 percent from beyond the arc. The Cyclone defense held Oklahoma to 34.6 percent shooting from the floor and a 23.8 percent effort from long range. ISU held the Sooners to 20 points below their season scoring average. The Cyclones outrebounded OU most of the night but the Sooners closed to within one board at the final buzzer, 37-36. ISU went 22-for-31 from the charity stripe and Oklahoma went 15-for-25 in a game where 50 total fouls were called. The Cyclones led 33-21 at the break after holding Oklahoma to just one field goal over the final eight and a half minutes of the period. The first 12 minutes of the half went back and forth with five lead changes and three ties. The Sooners led 16-15 on a field goal by Stevenson, before ISU began building its lead. Lacey knocked down a three-pointer to give the Cyclones the lead for the rest of the contest. OU scored three of its final five points in the period from the charity stripe. Stevenson scored the Sooners’ final field goal and got the bonus to draw OU within eight, 29-21 with 4:38 to go. Amanda Zimmerman scored and Poppens hit a pair of free throws to close out the scoring for the half with ISU up by 12. Six of ISU’s nine first-half field goals came from beyond the arc, while the Cyclones scored nine of its points from the free-throw line. Iowa State dominated the glass in the first half, 23-14. Ten of ISU’s first half caroms came off the offensive glass. The Sooners shot 25 percent from the field and were 7-of-12 from the charity stripe. Oklahoma came out of the locker room on a mission, going on a 14-5 run to close ISU’s lead to three, 38-35. The Cyclones scored just two field goals over the first nine minutes of the second half. Iowa State finally found Prins for six straight points as it extended its lead 44-37 with 8:38 to go in the contest. Oklahoma cut the lead back to four (46-42) before the Cyclones hit four straight free throws and Bolte got a layup to push Iowa State back out ahead by nine, 52-43. Thompson drained a three-pointer for OU with 3:25 left in the game to make the score 52-46 but Bolte came down and hit a trey of her won on the other end to basically put the game out of reach. The Sooners closed to within four points, 60-56, with 20 seconds left on another Thompson trey, but Bolte hit a pair of free throws to keep the Sooners from getting any closer. Iowa State will travel to Manhattan, Kan., to take on Kansas State at 2 p.m. Sunday before returning to Ames to play host to Texas Tech at 7 p.m. next Wednesday.
