The Iowa State Cyclones were supposed to be one of the best teams in the country this year. A lot of that was due to junior post player Audi Crooks. It turned out that Addy Brown was the piece the team couldn’t
do without.
The Cyclones have fallen out of the rankings and are just 3-5 in Big 12 play. They opened conference play with wins over bottom dwellers Kansas and Houston then went on a five-game slide against Baylor, Cincinnati, West Virginia, Colorado, and Oklahoma State. That finally came to an end in their last game when they got to host the Bearcats at Hilton Coliseum.
Brown has not played since the loss to Baylor on Jan. 4. Until the win over the Bearcats, ISU had been outscored 308-253. All the losses except the one to Colorado were by double digits. OSU blew the Cyclones out by 28 points.
The offense had relied on Crooks and former Arizona Wildcat guard Jada Williams. Williams finally broke out against Cincinnati in the team’s last game, going off for 44 points. However, she has faced some of the same struggles in Ames that she had in Tucson.
Up Next for Arizona Women’s Basketball
Arizona Wildcats @ RV Iowa State Cyclones
When: Saturday, Jan. 24 @ 2 p.m. MST
Where: Hilton Coliseum in Ames, Iowa
TV: FS1
Streaming: Fox Sports app, Fox Sports website, or Fox One
Radio: 1400 AM (KTUC)
Stats: Arizona Live Stats
With Crooks anchoring the inside, ISU relies on others to shoot from distance to open things up. Brown shoots over 42 percent from beyond the arc. The well-rounded forward also shoots 49.7 percent overall and averages 9.0 rebounds per game.
Without Brown, teams often dared Williams to shoot from outside and she struggled. She finally has her 3-point percentage above 30 percent but not by a lot.
Williams hits just 32.2 percent of her 3s while attempting 4.5 of them a game. Her numbers were greatly improved by going 6 for 10 from outside in the second matchup with Cincinnati. That brought her 3-point percentage up from 28.8 percent, which is in line with what she did at Arizona her freshman and sophomore seasons.
Williams will be trying to reproduce her last outing when her former team comes to Ames. Crooks will see if she can get Arizona’s bigs in foul trouble, something they’re very prone to. Will it be enough?
ISU still has Brown listed as out for its game against Arizona. The Wildcats still list Micky Perdue and Montaya Dew. Can Williams and Crooks lift their team to a fourth conference victory or will Arizona pull off the upset they couldn’t complete at TCU?
