Iowa State Survives Scare from Texas Tech, 72-54
By Ross
If you didn’t watch the game and just looked at the score, you would probably think that Iowa State had their way with the Big 12’s worst team in Texas Tech. That wasn’t the case tonight, Texas Tech outplayed the Cyclones for the majority of the game. However, the Cyclones ended the game on a 17-2 run which was enough to defeat Tech.
Texas Tech dominated the first half. At one point, the Red Raiders had a 9-point lead. Billy Gillispie’s team was beating the Cyclones in about every major statistical category in the first twenty minutes. Texas Tech was even up for most of the first eight minutes in the second half. Then the Cyclones got it together and took care of business against a really, really bad team. Iowa State ended up doubling up Texas Tech in the second half, outscoring the Red Raiders 44-22.
Royce White was close again to a triple-double, scoring 13 with 10 boards, and 8 assists. Oh yea, Royce White had a pretty awesome dunk too which should be on SportsCenter’s Top 10 tonight. Melvin Ejim had 17 and so did Scott Christopherson. Chris Allen added 12 and Percy Gibson had a couple nice moves down low on his way to 7 points.
The two players I was worried about doing damage for Tech, Lewandowski and Tolbert, were both held in check. Lewandowski, who had a huge game earlier in the year against ISU, only had 4. While Tech’s leading scorer, Jordan Tolbert, was held to 6 points.
With the win, Iowa State has 20 wins in February for only the third time in the history of the program. Also, the Cyclones are now tied with Baylor for third place in the conference at 10-5. Now comes a difficult stretch of games for the Clones; at Kansas State, at Mizzou, and vs Baylor.