Iowa State Cyclones’ guard Izaiah Brockington (1) lays up the ball around TCU Horned Frogs Center Eddie Lampkin (4) during the second half at Hilton Coliseum Saturday, Jan. 22, 2022, in Ames, Iowa.
AMES — It is hard to pick up a bad loss in the Big 12.
The league and every team in it is so good that bad losses are nearly non-existent. You have to really bungle a game against one of the league’s lesser teams (even if lesser is a relative term) in order to have one put on your resume during conference play.
It would’ve been especially hard to imagine this Iowa State team to land a bad loss. This team has proven to be tough as nails during its first 19 games this season and defends their asses off for 40 minutes.
This team seemed built to avoid bad losses, but that was proven to be untrue on Saturday when Iowa State suffered a 59-44 loss to TCU at Hilton Coliseum. The 44 points land as the fewest Iowa State has ever scored at home during Hilton Coliseum’s 50-year history.
Playing at home? Check. Lose to one of the league’s relatively lesser teams? Check. Looking inept at times in the process, especially offensively? Check.
A bad loss on the 2021-22 Iowa State Cyclones’ resume? Check.
“Humbling, especially in front of our fans that come out and support us the way (they) do,” said Iowa State head coach T.J. Otzelberger. “But I can tell you, what we will do is we’ll get back to practice, we’ll fight like crazy, we’ll compete. We’re going to get back to being the team that takes charges, that dictates, that flies around, that has great rebounding energy, that dictates offense, because that was not an acceptable effort. Not at any point in time, based on the way we work in our program.”
It would have been hard to imagine Iowa State playing worse offensively than it did on Tuesday night’s loss to Texas Tech down in Lubbock. Yet, that was exactly what we saw against TCU.
Iowa State consistently looked disorganized and discombobulated. There was a significant amount of standing around. There was a lot of losing hold of the ball. There were so, so, so many missed shots.
This Cyclone squad will never be an elite shooting team. Ever. The roster simply does not contain the ability to be that even if they’ll have days (like last Saturday against Texas) when they give off the appearance of competence from deep.
Iowa State shot 3-of-26 from 3-point range against the Horned Frogs. That follows up a 5-of-26 performance against Tech. The Cyclones have made eight of their last 52 shots from 3-point range. That’s a 15 percent rate for those wondering.
As if the fact this team shooting 26.9 percent from 3-point range during Big 12 play has attempted 26 3-pointers in consecutive games isn’t baffling enough, their selection of those shots can be even worse at times.
There were far too many shots from deep early in the shot clock against TCU. They attempted a considerable amount of those early shots with defenders closing out and a hand in their face.
The only thing that saved this team from complete and utter embarrassment against the Frogs was the performance of Izaiah Brockington, who scored 19 points on 8-of-14 from the field to go along with 12 rebounds.
His teammates combined to go 9-of-41 from the field – 22 percent.
Iowa State’s guards not named Brockington combined to shoot 6-of-32 from the field and 3-of-23 from 3-point range. Gabe Kalscheur and Tyrese Hunter combined to shoot 3-of-19 on field goals and 2-of-13 from deep.
It doesn’t matter how good you are defensively when you shoot like that. When your guards are shooting at that kind of rate in this league, you’re going to get your asses kicked.
Iowa State got its ass kicked on its home floor by a team most people would have considered to be ninth or 10th in the league before this week.
“The disappointing part is that our guys reacted to (the poor shooting) and it took away from our defensive energy,” Otzelberger said. “I felt like our court demeanor and body language and ability to dictate wasn’t at the level that we’ve come to to play at day in and day out. We’ve certainly had stretches, I don’t think it’s a big secret, where we’ve had some challenges offensively. We haven’t shot it particularly well. But in those games, our competitive spirit in generating turnovers and dictating defensively, it’s helped us get going in transition today that that wasn’t the case.”
Iowa State wasn’t terrible on the defensive end in this game. It wasn’t up to the great standard this team holds itself to, but it wasn’t bad. It was good enough to hold TCU to 59 points, which should be good enough to win against that team on your home floor.
No, the Cyclones’ issues right now fall squarely on the offensive end where they seem to struggle more and more with each passing game.
Teams have clearly scouted Iowa State’s offensive sets really well. The high post actions that worked early in the season have been scouted out into becoming George Conditt or Robert Jones standing 20-feet from the basket with nowhere to go with the ball due to opponents all-out denying the other four players on the floor.
Opponents are daring Conditt and Jones to do something with the basketball from that spot — and I can’t say I blame them. Neither of those guys is going to beat someone on their own, which is nothing against them. They just aren’t that type of player.
Brockington is being forced exclusively to his right and closed off from his left every time he touches the ball, which probably explains some of his tendency to rely so much on mid-range jumpers in recent games.
He can’t drive left straight into a defender, but he has to make something happen anyway — and he usually still does despite the fact everyone playing and watching the game knows he’s the guy who will have to do something.
Teams are forcing Brockington into uncomfortable spots then largely telling every other guy on the floor to beat them. If they don’t beat them, they’ll shoot the Cyclones out of the game with poor shot selection and just a flat-out inability to make shots.
Kalscheur, Hunter and a few others have proven they have the ability to make shots at times, but those moments seem to be fleeting. For every performance like we’ve seen from Kalscheur against Texas or Memphis, there’s a Baylor or TCU.
Finding a way to get literally anything from those guys has to be the biggest key moving towards Wednesday night’s tilt with Oklahoma State in Stillwater. The staff will surely be going back to the drawing board with some of these things in an attempt to create something on that end.
What worked before simply isn’t working anymore — and it’s hard to imagine that changing anytime soon because this league is too good.
Until then, there will be nights when this team seems to hit everything, but even more nights when they seem to hit absolutely nothing and shoot themselves out of a game.
It doesn’t matter how well you defend when that’s your situation on offense.
That is simply the recipe for a bad loss.
