Iowa State women’s basketball: 3 things to watch during the Cyclones’ trip to Kansas

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AMES – Iowa State women’s basketball coach Bill Fennelly wanted to remind his players just how close they were to the end of the season and how much was still at stake. So Fennelly grabbed a sheet of paper and wrote down the list of the Cyclones’ final five opponents and included a fact about what they could accomplish with each win.

Every opponent had something different. Saturday’s trip to Kansas, a 4 p.m. tip-off against the Jayhawks at Allen Fieldhouse, offers the Cyclones a rare opportunity to sweep a Big 12 Conference opponent despite an unbalanced schedule. Iowa State plays Kansas, Kansas State and UCF twice this season; the Cyclones play the other 12 league opponents just once.

“Obviously every Big 12 game is super important for us,” said Iowa State point guard Emily Ryan. “Like coach Fenn always says, once you get to February, you want to have games that are important and mean something and we’ve put ourselves in a position that the games are important and they mean a lot to what we can do later in the season.”

Iowa State enters the final stretch of the season with tons still on the line. The Cyclones (17-9 overall, 8-5 in Big 12 Conference play) can make or potentially break their shot at earning an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament next month. Iowa State has yet to tally a marquee win this season but hasn’t suffered a truly unexpected loss either.

That’s left Iowa State in a peculiar situation as it nears the finish line of the regular season. The Cyclones, a mainstay in the NCAA Tournament throughout Fennelly’s tenure, could end up on the edge of making it in this year. ESPN women’s bracketologist Charlie Creme had Iowa State on the bubble in his projections that came out on Tuesday.

But that could rapidly change in the team’s final five games of the season. Iowa State plays three teams with losing records in the conference including Kansas, UCF and Houston. A loss to any of those teams would tarnish the Cyclones’ resume. On the flip side,…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/iowa-state-womens-basketball-3-113119085.html

Author : The Des Moines Register

Publish date : 2025-02-14 11:31:00

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