AMES − Every college basketball team has to deal with some adversity. Even the great ones.
Sometimes those adverse moments last for a few minutes, a half, a day, or in Iowa State‘s case − multiple weeks.
The Cyclones men’s basketball team is headed back to Hilton Coliseum for a Saturday matinee 11 a.m. CT tip-off against TCU, which will also be the site of ESPN’s “College GameDay” show.
Although an exciting opportunity for Iowa State to be featured on a national platform, its first on “College GameDay” since the 2015 showdown against Kansas, a bit of the buzz and excitement has dampened given the Cyclones’ three-game losing streak.
They are now 3-4 since sophomore Milan Momcilovic went down with a hand injury. Their last two losses were by double-digit margins against a Kansas State team that was previously winless on the road, followed by a 69-52 loss to Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse on Monday.
“Obviously, it’s hard to not see things on social media, especially when we all have so many different types of it,” Iowa State guard Tamin Lipsey said. “Obviously, it’s great, when you’re winning games and all that and then you lose one or two games, and people start to turn on you and you see negative things. We all realize it’s a part of it, just have to learn how to handle it. It’s external distraction, so try to just block it out when it’s good and bad and just focus on what we can do to keep winning games.”
It’s the first time Iowa State has lost three straight since the 2022-23 season.
The current skid has led to debate among fans. Are the Cyclones legit? Is it a temporary setback and the team just sustained a flat tire, or are all the wheels on a promising season ready to fall off?
For head coach T.J. Otzelberger, there’s no doubt that his Cyclones remain upbeat and locked in.
“Sometimes, when you’re not to be successful, guys look down, deflated, they’re disappointed in themselves, they feel like they let their teammates down. And that wasn’t the case − even though we were highly disappointed on Monday,” Otzelberger said of the team’s pulse. “It was more of a look in the eyes of, ‘OK, we’re ready to change this.’ … I think when things go well, you get a little bit distracted. Scoring the ball for certain individuals can be intoxicating, getting attention of how great you are, how great you’re playing, pressure of here’s where you’re ranked, here’s the home winning streak − all those things are external distractors.
“To say they don’t impact in some way would be disingenuous. Now all of that is kind of behind us, to the side, move it out of the way, let’s focus on being the best version of the team we can be.”
Iowa State is 17-5 overall and 7-4 in Big 12 play entering Saturday.
The Cyclones remain ranked in the top 10. The road to a conference regular-season title got a lot harder, but the Big 12 Tournament title and a potential run to the Final Four all remain on the table.
“It’s been rough (for Iowa State), but everybody’s going to go through it in our league for the most part,” Kansas coach Bill Self said after defeating the Cyclones on Monday. “They’re going to be fine. They’re certainly a team that can go to the Final Four.”
Perhaps it’s flattery from the two-time national championship coach, but Self has a point.
“Adversity hits at different times for every team, every year, right?” Otzelberger said.
Perhaps UConn’s recent rise to the national title made people forget how difficult it can be. Last year, the Huskies had one of the most dominant runs in NCAA Tournament history. They never lost back-to-back games during their 37-3 season, but they did suffer stunning double-digit losses to Seton Hall and Creighton along the way.
During the Huskies’ 2023 national title run, they opened conference play 5-6, including a stretch when they lost five of six games, and got bounced out early from the Big East Tournament. UConn went on to smash every opponent by double figures in the NCAA Tournament.
In 2022, Self’s Jayhawks took tough regular-season losses before going on a perfect run through the Big 12 and NCAA Tournaments to finish on top with a 34-6 record. The year before that, 2021 national champion Baylor got knocked out early from the Big 12 Tournament and had to regroup in time for the Big Dance.
If recent national champions weren’t immune to rough patches, then neither will this year’s Cyclones, who are aiming to bring the school to their first Final Four since 1944 (when there were only eight teams in the tournament).
“Just get back to work,” Iowa State junior Demarion Watson said of how the Cyclones can break out of their rut. “Two years ago, when we had those losing streaks, we really just ramped up in our practices and just got straight back to work, got back to our habits and just doing things we know we can do every day and control the things we can’t control.”
There’s still plenty of basketball left and the Cyclones are not yet at full strength.
There was a promising sign though, as Momcilovic returned to practice for the first time on Thursday morning. However, Iowa State is not using his absence as an excuse for its poor offensive output in recent games.
“As much as Milan has a tremendous value to our team, I think it’s important our guys understand even though our team changed a little bit at that time, we still had some really good moments and we’ve done some really good things offensively,” Otzelberger said. “It just hasn’t been consistent over all of the games. Some of the games, our offensive disappointment has led us to kind of being consumed with it.”
The losing streak is tough, but perhaps the Cyclones will get to look back at this stretch in the future and be thankful it made them stronger.
“I saw a big difference from that (Kansas State) loss and the loss at Kansas − completely different from body language and just the attitude of the guys,” Lipsey said. “Obviously, we didn’t get the win in either of those games, but at Kansas, we felt like we played harder. We played more like ourselves, just wasn’t the day for us to get that win.
“Obviously, (Kansas) played a great game, but after that game, it was a positive view to just see the guys sort of have that hunger in their eyes, feel like that’s something we needed. We needed to hit some adversity, it’ll help us later and later down the road.”
Eugene Rapay covers Iowa State athletics for the Des Moines Register. Contact Eugene at erapay@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @erapay5.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Iowa State basketball: Cyclones aim to overcome 3-game losing streak
