Mar 4, 2025; Ames, Iowa, USA; Brigham Young Cougars guard Trey Stewart (1) defends Iowa State Cyclones guard Curtis Jones (5) at James H. Hilton Coliseum. Mandatory Credit: Reese Strickland-Imagn Images
AMES — It felt inevitable.
Senior night. A double-bye in next week’s Big 12 Tournament on the line — not to mention a potential top-three seed line for the NCAA Tournament. An Iowa State comeback for the ages reawakening a Hilton Coliseum crowd that never, ever, ever will count their team out.
But hoped-for happy endings are trumped by muddled middles — and that’s why the No. 10 Cyclones closed the regular season Tuesday with an 88-85 double overtime loss to BYU at home despite overcoming a 21-point second-half deficit to take three two-point leads in the first overtime.
“It hurts because we clawed all the way back, but it’s on us for even getting down that much,” said senior guard Curtis Jones, who scored 16 points in what’s almost certainly his last game at Hilton for ISU (22-8, 12-7). “We were just kind of getting bullied (late) in the first (half) and the beginning of the second, and then at the end they were getting a lot of offensive rebounds — they had 17 — so we just didn’t execute well enough down the stretch.”
Or in several key moments in the middle portion of the game. The Cyclones built a 17-10 edge with 8:50 left in the first half on senior guard Keshon Gilbert’s 3-pointer, but the Cougars (22-8, 13-6) outscored them, 23-7, down the stretch to take a 33-24 lead into the break.
That’s remarkable for a lot of reasons — not the least of which is that BYU failed to score a single point in the first six in a half minutes of the game. But the Cyclones let their early shooting woes affect their defense and the Cougars took full advantage.
ISU forced an astonishing 29 turnovers in the game … and lost. The Cyclones also were battered on the boards, 52-24, in part, but not wholly, because their furious second-half rally hinged on the intense ball pressure created by a four guard/one big lineup most of the time.
“Then, what you give up is a little bit of that size and physicality on the glass,” said ISU head coach T.J. Otzelberger, whose team fell to 19-2 this season when at full strength. “At the same time, I know our guys are competitors and it can’t be every shot that they miss in the end of regulation and in both overtimes, they get the rebound. It just can’t happen. It’s not OK. … There’s a part of defensive rebounding that if you want to win bad enough, you just find a way to get them — regardless of what’s going on. They had more fight on the glass to get the offensive rebound than we did to get the defensive rebound, unfortunately.”
Junior forward Joshua Jefferson led five Cyclones in double figures with 19 points. His pair of clutch free throws with nine seconds remaining in regulation gave his team a chance to complete its ill-fated comeback. And his layup with 34 seconds left in overtime gave ISU a 79-77 lead, but BYU scored on the other end to force another five-minute slog to the end.
“Joshua has continued to be a great player for us and proves over and over that if you put the ball in his hands, great things are gonna happen,” Otzelberger said.
The Cyclones did not put the ball in Jefferson’s hands in their last full possession in the second overtime — but they tried to do so. Instead, the ball stuck in sophomore forward Milan Momcilovic’s hands and BYU closed out on him forcefully and induced a shot clock violation.
“They guarded it well,” said Momcilovic, who scored 18 points and drilled one of his four 3-pointers to tie the game, 66-66, with 44 seconds left in regulation. “We were trying to get it inside to Joshua, I think they denied it and kind of just a broken play at the end. Had it in my hands, shot an airball, so not what I wanted, but it happened.”
And that’s why what felt inevitable proved to be illusory. All of those emotional elements — senior night, seeding concerns, the frenzied comeback — appeared to be aligning to repeat history. In last season’s final home game, the Cougars took a 14-point lead early in the second half, but Jones and his teammates overcame it to win by five.
This time, that revival didn’t necessarily come too late. It simply received and deserved an incomplete grade. And if the Cyclones are to make the Final Four-worthy noise they not long ago seemed almost destined to make as March marches on, inconsistency and anything short of a compete effort must finally become a vestige of the past.
“There’s not gonna be any take our time, ease into it,” Otzelberger said. “We’re done with the inconsistent thing. We’re done with the individual agendas offensively, and it’s time for us to start playing to the level of the team that we know we are.”
