Afternoon game.
The Game
Iowa State @ Oklahoma State
The Time
3:00 PM Central
The Television
ESPN+
The Opponent
Oklahoma State. The Big 12’s mean.
The Numbers
Vegas has Iowa State an 11-point underdog, with the over/under at 147.5. KenPom gives the Cyclones a 12% chance to win and projects a final score of 78-65.
What Iowa State Needs to Do
Keep up with Oklahoma State.
The Pokes like to run. They’re going to run. Their offense is predicated upon getting to the hoop and thereby getting second chances and getting to the free throw line. This is hard to defend, but not impossible—the Oklahoma State offense is, per KenPom, worse than even TCU’s within the Big 12.
The other end will likely be the bigger problem.
Oklahoma State doesn’t rebound all that well defensively, and doesn’t force all that many turnovers, but it’s hard to score against the Cowboys, especially inside the arc, where Kalib Boone is among the nation’s best shot-blockers and Cade Cunningham and Bryce Williams are rather hard to get past themselves.
Isaac Likekele didn’t play for Oklahoma State on Saturday, so keep an eye on that. His absence would hurt the Pokes. Beyond that, at least for the moment the word is everyone’s healthy. We’ll see if that holds up.
As usual, Iowa State’s best chance to win is just playing their game the best they possibly can play it. But those areas—tempo, Oklahoma State’s offensive rebounding, Oklahoma State’s ability to get to the free throw line, Oklahoma State’s interior defense—are the things that figure to make it really hard for ISU to have success.
We’ll see.
