Cyclones leave for Oklahoma State without McKay

AMES — There's a big shake-up swirling around the Cyclones.

Friday night it was confirmed by Iowa State that senior forward Jameel McKay did not make the trip to Stillwater, Okla., and is suspended indefinitely. ISU did not reveal the reason why.

McKay later wrote '1 game' on his Twitter account.

1 gameFebruary 6, 2016

1 game

— ShowTime ✨ (@ShowTime_McKay)

McKay has started 34 consecutive games for Iowa State, and is averaging almost a double-double with 12.4 points and 9.0 rebounds per game.

A preseason all-Big 12 pick, the loss of the 6-foot-9 McKay would create a sizable hole for No. 14 Iowa State (16-6, 5-4).

And it comes on the heels of the Cyclones losing two straight, at No. 8 Texas A&M and at home to No. 12 West Virginia.

The team was shaken when they met with the media on Thursday, and that was before McKay was suspended.

Junior guard Monte Morris expressed his concern about the team failing to close out an opponent for the second game in a row and thinks shot selection and offensive decisions in the final minutes were ill advised.

Whatever the factor, players determined the same thing: Iowa State has to find a way to put together 40 minutes of toughness.

'I would love our teams to be known as physically and mentally tough kids,' Iowa State Coach Steve Prohm said. 'We've got that in this locker room and we've shown that several times this year. But we've had two stretches at home where for a couple minutes, we weren't very good and the room for error is not a lot in this league.'

'We got beat,' senior forward Georges Niang said. 'Did we play to the best of our abilities? No, but there is a good amount of the season left where we can go prove what we can do and how good of a team we are.'

Glaring issues presented themselves after the loss and with Iowa State now facing two Big 12 road trips — starting Saturday with Oklahoma State — finding answers to what went wrong is essential.

Being out-rebounded by 17 against the Mountaineers is a place for the Cyclones to start looking.

'Come out there and be tougher,' McKay said Thursday. 'We've got to win all the hustle plays and the 50-50 balls. That wasn't an extremely big team, we've played bigger teams, but they just wanted the ball more than we did.

'For me personally I've just got to go out there with a rebounding mentality.'

Iowa State now gets two of the bottom teams in the Big 12. The Cowboys (11-11, 2-7) have struggled, but beat Kansas in Stillwater by 19 points and two league home losses were to ranked teams — each by four points or less.

After going 25 years without a win in Gallagher-Iba Arena, Iowa State has won the last two meetings at Oklahoma State, including a triple-overtime game, and has five-straight wins in the series. Even after overcoming the losing streak, Niang said the feeling of playing there hasn't changed.

'I think it just gets tougher as you go down there because they had that long streak,' Niang said. 'They probably have this game circled on their calendar to get that streak back to what they had it at.'

Oklahoma State could be without leading scorer Jawun Evans, who suffered a shoulder injury against Texas Tech.