SHOP THE IOWA STATE COLLECTION
Within the heartland of Ames, IA, a basketball symphony is reaching its crescendo. The Iowa State Cyclones, lengthy overshadowed within the nationwide highlight, have emerged as a reliable powerhouse, their sights set firmly on school basketball’s highest honor, a nationwide championship. Whereas each crew within the nation started the season with the dream of strolling up the ladder and reducing down the nets in entrance of a offered out crowd in San Antonio on April 7, Iowa State is on a brief checklist of applications with the means to truly do it. Orchestrated by head coach TJ Otzelberger, this yr’s squad embodies a tradition of resilience, camaraderie, toughness, self-discipline, authenticity and above all else, confidence. However to grasp how this yr’s Cyclones have gotten to inside an arm’s attain of the head, you have to first perceive the place they’ve been.
Final yr’s Cyclones gained the crew’s most convention video games since 2001, completed second within the Huge 12 standings and capped all of it off with a blowout win over the then-No.1 ranked Houston Cougars within the Huge 12 Match Championship. Then got here the NCAA Match. They’d make simple work of their first two opponents, earlier than shedding a nail-biter to Illinois within the Candy Sixteen. Alas, it was again to the drafting board.
The scars of final season’s abrupt exit from the Match nonetheless linger. For a lot of, such a setback may very well be the harbinger of decline, however not for Iowa State. Beneath Coach Otzelberger’s vigilant eye, the Cyclones turned disappointment right into a silver lining. Each summer time exercise, each movie session, was imbued with a singular goal: the get again. And anyone who is aware of something about school basketball is aware of this one factor: If you wish to make a deep run with an opportunity to win all of it, it begins along with your guards. Fortunately for Iowa State, they’re led by a pair of killers in Curtis Jones and Keshon Gilbert, who’re proving to be among the best backcourts within the nation.
Jones, a Minnesota native, is the epitome of what this Iowa State program represents. The 6-4 do-it-all swingman has a knack for placing the ball within the rim along with his feathery contact and performs with a contagious pleasure and spirit that permeates the entire squad. He didn’t have a single supply popping out of highschool and would find yourself beginning his school profession at Indian Hills Neighborhood School in Ottumwa, IA. After one standout season, he’d take his skills to Buffalo College, the place he’d play for 2 years, en path to changing into an All-MAC participant, earlier than finally transferring to Iowa State final yr.
Jones’s backcourt companion, Gilbert, was equally underrated popping out of highschool, ranked as a 3-star recruit. He loved modest success in two years at UNLV and would additionally enter the switch portal after the ’23 season and develop into a Cyclone. The 6 -4 lead guard made his impression felt straight away in his first season in Ames, main the crew in scoring on his technique to incomes a handful of honors: All-Huge 12 Second Staff, Huge 12 Championship All-Match Staff and Huge 12 Championship MVP. Merely put, he’s the engine that makes this crew go.
Together with Jones and Gilbert, this yr’s crew had a few key items come again from final yr’s Candy Sixteen crew—their All-Huge 12 junior guard Tamin Lipsey, and their sophomore ahead Milan Momcilovic, who earned a spot on the Huge 12 Championship All-Match Staff. This yr’s roster additionally noticed one other gifted switch class into the fold: former All-Missouri Valley guard Nate Heise (Northern Iowa), Joshua Jefferson (St. Mary’s), Brandton Chatfield (Seattle) and Dishon Jackson (Charlotte).
We’re midway via this season with convention play properly underway, and Iowa State has been flat out glorious. And in the event you don’t imagine me, simply ask Baylor’s Corridor of Fame coach Scott Drew, who not too long ago known as them “among the best two groups within the nation” after struggling a blowout loss by the hands of the Cyclones.
The AP polls are barely much less beneficiant; as we go to press at present, the AP Prime 25 polls have Iowa State ranked third. But, by some means, the Cyclones nonetheless appear to be flying underneath the radar.
“That’s been a chip on our shoulder since earlier than we obtained right here. I don’t really feel like me or [Jones] ever obtained the popularity we deserve,” says Gilbert. “However that’s simply extra motivation. That simply places extra gasoline within the tank, and provides extra gasoline to the hearth. So, it’s what it’s.”
“You get the popularity while you win,” says Jones. “No matter comes with profitable, we’ll take it. We’re not likely in it for the popularity, however that’s what comes with it.”
If anybody’s shocked by how dominant they’ve been, you may guess it’s not anybody of their locker room. They anticipated this.
“Coming into this season, we knew how good we may very well be. Me and Keshon had been all the time speaking about what we had been going to do and what we felt like we might do,” says Jones. “The outcomes are coming now, however it began due to how final yr ended. We obtained to it straight away this yr; we already knew what it was.”
And in the event you allow them to inform it, they’re solely simply starting to scratch the floor of their potential. Nevermind them convincingly profitable nearly all of their video games up to now by double digits.
“We ain’t even actually enjoying our greatest. I’d say we’re enjoying good, we’re enjoying strong, however we nonetheless have enhancements to make. And that’s thrilling, as a result of we’ve nonetheless been profitable handily. However we now have room for enchancment, even in that. And that’s what nice groups do. They discover the place they’ll enhance and never simply be content material with profitable video games. We gained the final two by like 20, however we wanna make that 30,” says Jones.
It’s not farfetched to check Iowa State pulling off just a few 30-point victories earlier than the season’s out. Effectively, just a few extra 30-point victories I ought to say. That they had a handful of wins by at the least that a lot from their early non-conference slate, which matches to point out that these Cyclones aren’t enjoying with their meals. They know what’s at stake, they usually’ve embraced all the pieces it takes to achieve their final aim of a natty. Not a single second will be taken as a right once they’re making an attempt to do one thing that’s by no means been executed in program historical past. To wit: Gilbert and Jones say they’ll’t even consider a time that Coach Otzelberger has even talked about a Huge 12 Championship, not to mention the nationwide championship; he makes it some extent to take it sport by sport, brick by brick.
The star backcourt makes clear that they’re holding “the principle factor the principle factor.” They embrace the notion that their private objectives will likely be rather more simply attainable in the event that they maintain profitable first.
Each crew who’s ever climbed that ladder because the final crew standing has at the least one factor in widespread: they ran towards the work, not away from it. In that regard, the Iowa State program, helmed by Coach Otzelberger, is properly on their approach. And we all know the outdated saying: Nothing price having comes simple.
“I ain’t gonna lie, Iowa State isn’t for everyone—in the event you don’t actually love basketball, you ain’t gonna prefer it. You ain’t gonna match right here, as a result of basketball is all it’s,” says Gilbert. “We work onerous as hell, so we all know all the pieces’s gonna fall into place.”
Portraits by Matthew Coughlin.