1. It wasn’t a bad result.
No, the game wasn’t as close as the final margin—six points—indicates. But it’s still hard to be unhappy with how the Cyclones played. Texas isn’t really trying to force turnovers, but it was still good to see ISU not turn it over, and Javon Johnson having one of his best two games of the year (talking about the South Dakota State game as the other, not the one at Iowa) was an encouraging sight. Did Iowa State have a chance to win? Not really, mathematically. But they were competitive, and it’s the second straight game one can say that about them (and in two of their four most difficult scheduled games, no less).
2. The jury’s out on the defense.
Texas has a lot of options, and it used them. The defensive effort wasn’t as encouraging as it was against Baylor, but it’s hard to say it was a bad one. We’ll keep an eye on this.
3. Can consistency be achieved?
One sneaky trend over the last three games has been Iowa State’s decreasing reliance on the three-point shot as its method of attempting to score. It’s worked well for them, clearly, but if maintained, it’ll change our perception of what the Cyclones are. We thought of them previously as a team that was going to chuck enough to eventually knock off someone good, through the sheer law of averages (if you shoot twenty or more threes a game, eventually there’ll be a night where you make twelve or fifteen). Now, we aren’t so sure.
The upside to this is that it figures to make blowouts at the hands of the Big 12’s non-elites—the Oklahoma schools, TCU, Kansas State (God forbid)—less likely. And from a pure wins and losses standpoint, something that makes you a better team is a desirable something. In other words, what I’m trying to say is that by pivoting away from the three, ISU might be giving up a viable path to beating, say, Kansas (the path being “get lucky from deep”), but it’s improving its ability to compete with teams it should compete with—and, next Wednesday in Manhattan, a team it should beat.
