How Iowa State Ascended on to College Basketball's Radar

SHOP THE IOWA STATE COLLECTION

In the heartland of Ames, IA, a basketball symphony is reaching its crescendo. The Iowa State Cyclones, long overshadowed in the national spotlight, have emerged as a legitimate powerhouse, their sights set firmly on college basketball’s highest honor, a national championship. While every team in the country began the season with the dream of walking up the ladder and cutting down the nets in front of a sold out crowd in San Antonio on April 7, Iowa State is on a short list of programs with the means to actually do it. Orchestrated by head coach TJ Otzelberger, this year’s squad embodies a culture of resilience, camaraderie, toughness, discipline, authenticity and above all else, confidence. But to understand how this year’s Cyclones have gotten to within an arm’s reach of the pinnacle, you must first understand where they’ve been.

Last year’s Cyclones won the team’s most conference games since 2001, finished second in the Big 12 standings and capped it all off with a blowout win over the then-No.1 ranked Houston Cougars in the Big 12 Tournament Championship. Then came the NCAA Tournament. They’d make easy work of their first two opponents, before losing a nail-biter to Illinois in the Sweet Sixteen. Alas, it was back to the drawing board.

The scars of last season’s abrupt exit from the Tournament still linger. For many, such a setback could be the harbinger of decline, but not for Iowa State. Under Coach Otzelberger’s vigilant eye, the Cyclones turned disappointment into a silver lining. Every summer workout, every film session, was imbued with a singular purpose: the get back. And anybody who knows anything about college basketball knows this one thing: If you want to make a deep run with a chance to win it all, it starts with your guards. Luckily for Iowa State, they’re led by a pair of killers in Curtis Jones and Keshon Gilbert, who are proving to be one of the best backcourts in 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 putting the ball in the rim with his feathery touch and plays with a contagious joy and spirit that permeates the whole squad. He didn’t have a single offer coming out of high school and would end up starting his college career at Indian Hills Community College in Ottumwa, IA. After one standout season, he’d take his talents to Buffalo University, where he’d play for two years, en route to becoming an All-MAC player, before ultimately transferring to Iowa State last year.

Jones’s backcourt partner, Gilbert, was similarly underrated coming out of high school, ranked as a 3-star recruit. He enjoyed modest success in two years at UNLV and would also enter the transfer portal after the ’23 season and become a Cyclone. The 6 -4 lead guard made his impact felt right away in his first season in Ames, leading the team in scoring on his way to earning a handful of honors: All-Big 12 Second Team, Big 12 Championship All-Tournament Team and Big 12 Championship MVP. Simply put, he’s the engine that makes this team go.

Along with Jones and Gilbert, this year’s team had a couple of key pieces come back from last year’s Sweet Sixteen team—their All-Big 12 junior guard Tamin Lipsey, and their sophomore forward Milan Momcilovic, who earned a spot on the Big 12 Championship All-Tournament Team. This year’s roster also saw another talented transfer 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 halfway through this season with conference play well underway, and Iowa State has been flat out excellent. And if you don’t believe me, just ask Baylor’s Hall of Fame coach Scott Drew, who recently called them “one of the best two teams in the country” after suffering a blowout loss at the hands of the Cyclones.

The AP polls are slightly less generous; as we go to press today, the AP Top 25 polls have Iowa State ranked third. Yet, somehow, the Cyclones still seem to be flying under the radar.

“That’s been a chip on our shoulder since before we got here. I don’t feel like me or [Jones] ever got the recognition we deserve,” says Gilbert. “But that’s just more motivation. That just puts more fuel in the tank, and adds more fuel to the fire. So, it is what it is.”

“You get the recognition when you win,” says Jones. “Whatever comes with winning, we’ll take it. We’re not really in it for the recognition, but that’s what comes with it.”

If anyone’s surprised by how dominant they’ve been, you can bet it’s not anyone in their locker room. They expected this.

“Coming into this season, we knew how good we could be. Me and Keshon were always talking about what we were going to do and what we felt like we could do,” says Jones. “The results are coming now, but it all started because of how last year ended. We got to it right away this year; we already knew what it was.”

And if you let them tell it, they’re only just beginning to scratch the surface of their potential. Nevermind them convincingly winning the majority of their games thus far by double digits.

“We ain’t even really playing our best. I’d say we’re playing good, we’re playing solid, but we still have improvements to make. And that’s exciting, because we’ve still been winning handily. But we have room for improvement, even in that. And that’s what great teams do. They find where they can improve and not just be content with winning games. We won the last two by like 20, but we wanna make that 30,” says Jones.

It’s not farfetched to envision Iowa State pulling off a few 30-point victories before the season’s out. Well, a few more 30-point victories I should say. They had a handful of wins by at least that much from their early non-conference slate, which goes to show that these Cyclones aren’t playing with their food. They know what’s at stake, and they’ve embraced everything it takes to reach their ultimate goal of a natty. Not a single moment can be taken for granted when they’re trying to do something that’s never been done in program history. To wit: Gilbert and Jones say they can’t even think of a time that Coach Otzelberger has even mentioned a Big 12 Championship, let alone the national championship; he makes it a point to take it game by game, brick by brick.

The star backcourt makes clear that they’re keeping “the main thing the main thing.” They embrace the notion that their personal goals will be much more easily attainable if they take care of winning first.

Every team who’s ever climbed that ladder as the last team standing has at least one thing in common: they ran toward the work, not away from it. In that regard, the Iowa State program, helmed by Coach Otzelberger, is well on their way. And we know the old saying: Nothing worth having comes easy.

“I ain’t gonna lie, Iowa State isn’t for everybody—if you don’t really love basketball, you ain’t gonna like it. You ain’t gonna fit here, because basketball is all it is,” says Gilbert. “We work hard as hell, so we know everything’s gonna fall into place.”