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Iowa State Cyclones Topple Kansas Jayhawks For Back-To-Back Big 12 Tournament Titles

By Cody Daniel

Mar 14, 2015; Kansas City, MO, USA; The Iowa State Cyclones with head coach Fred Holberg raise the championship trophy after the game against the Kansas Jayhawks in the championship game of the Big 12 tournament at Sprint Center. Iowa State Cyclones won 70-66. Mandatory Credit: Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports
Mar 14, 2015; Kansas City, MO, USA; The Iowa State Cyclones with head coach Fred Holberg raise the championship trophy after the game against the Kansas Jayhawks in the championship game of the Big 12 tournament at Sprint Center. Iowa State Cyclones won 70-66. Mandatory Credit: Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports /
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For the second-straight season, the Iowa State Cyclones have prevailed as the last team standing in college basketball’s most competitive conference tournament; the Big 12 after knocking off the No. 1-seeded Kansas Jayhawks.

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Fred Hoiberg’s resilient bunch of junkyard dogs and scraps from programs around the country, led by Georges Niang, simply know how to win. If they don’t simply outscore you from start to finish, then consider yourself lucky. That’s just what each of the Cyclones last five opponents, including all three matchups in the Big 12 tournament have been.

Beginning with the final two games of the regular season, Iowa State has had to dig themselves out of some considerable holes each night to come out on top. They were down 21 to the Oklahoma Sooners before busting out 59 second half points to win 77-70.

TCU had a 10-point cushion – if you can even call it that – on the Cyclones in the regular season finale, but a 66-point explosion after halftime led to ISU cruising to an 89-76 victory for a 22-8 regular season finish.

The same would be the case in Kansas City for the Big 12 tournament. In their first matchup against the Texas Longhorns in the quarterfinals, the Cyclones were playing as if their luck had run out. Shots simply weren’t falling and nearly everything for Texas was, which again, led to a 15-point deficit for Iowa State to overcome with time running out in the second half.

But yet again, a dominant showing after outscoring Texas 44-31 after halftime saw the Cyclones move on to the semifinals after a

Monte Morris

buzzer-beater.

Against the Sooners in a battle to send someone to the Big 12 championship game, Iowa State clawed themselves out of an 11-point deficit to outlast Oklahoma 67-65 for a chance to defend their Big 12 title against the regular season champs.

But there was no way Iowa State could allow themselves to face such an uphill battle against the top team in the Big 12 with a chance to secure back-to-back conference championships, right?

That’s certainly the way I saw it. At halftime, the Jayhawks had all of the momentum. They were up 37-23 at the break and would extend that lead to 17 early in the second half.

At this point, I thought to myself, “Iowa State’s luck has finally run out. There’s no way the could complete a comeback against a Bill Self coached team with a large lead and a chance to win a Big 12 championship.” But just before my eyes and whatever insanely imaginable reason I doubted the Cyclones when they were down on such a big stage, the comeback began.

Jameel McKay put up two quick buckets for four of his 11 points on the night. Abdel Nader starting getting more involved on his way to 13 points and the one thing no Jayhawks fan in the world wanted to see started happening; Niang starting getting into one of his routine rhythms as a mismatch nightmare.

Next thing you know, we were deadlocked at 51 apiece and before you can blink, the Cyclones were on top and the outcome was all but assured, even with several minutes to play. There was no way Iowa State was going to lose this game. There were right where they wanted to be; down big with a chance to dig themselves out of a hole and win the game.

“We don’t want to come back every time but it just seems to keep happening to us,” Niang told ESPN.com. “If that’s our emergency button, if that’s what we have to do, we’ll do it.”

No matter what, this team never seemed to panic. They were seemingly down and out a handful of times in this tournament, but when you have a potent offense that drops nearly 80 points a game behind the leadership of guys like Niang, Morris, McKay and Dustin Hogue, every game is within reach until the final buzzer.

“We got down 17 and they were still talking and positive in the huddle,” Hoiberg said later, “and that’s a great sign, when your guys can stick together through adversity.”

Adversity is something the Cyclones have seen all season long playing in the absolutely loaded Big 12. They saw it in the regular season and they saw it in the Big 12 tournament and came out on top more when the games mattered most.

March Madness is all about which teams are playing their best basketball when it becomes a win-or-go-home situation and Iowa State is streaking right now with five-straight wins and another Big 12 title under their belt.

I’m not sure that there’s any team in college basketball not named Kentucky that would want to face Iowa State in the NCAA tournament, much less have a second-half lead on a group Niang has dubbed the “Comeback Kids.”

Next: College Basketball Rankings: Top 25 Teams In America

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