Naz Mitrou-Long busts shooting slump for career-high 37 points in Iowa State's win over Drake

DES MOINES — Naz Mitrou-Long's shot never feels bad when it leaves his hand.

Shooting struggles plagued the first nine games of his redshirt senior season, but he never diverted from the path he knew led to success. His reward was setting four Wells Fargo Arena scoring or shooting collegiate records.

Iowa State powered past Drake 97-80 — after a sluggish 35-plus minutes — due largely to Mitrou-Long's hot hand. He kept the Cyclones (7-3) afloat most of the night with 37 points on 14-for-18 shooting, including 8-for-12 from 3. The points, field goals, 3-pointers, and 3-point attempts (tied) were all arena highs.

'Man, he put on an epic performance,' said point guard Monte Morris, who had 20 points. 'I knew he was capable of shooting the ball well. Like I told (the media), I've seen him make 25 straight before. So him missing wasn't a big issue for me. It was just a matter of time and tonight was the night.'

Mitrou-Long's career-high 37 points were the most by an ISU player in a game since Feb. 8, 2014 when Melvin Ejim had 48 against TCU.

Here are a few highlights of Naz Mitrou-Long's 37-point effort vs. Drake December 18, 2016

Here are a few highlights of Naz Mitrou-Long's 37-point effort vs. Drake https://t.co/dqOEBf7qgS

— Cyclone Basketball (@CycloneMBB)

The difference between Mitrou-Long shooting 39 percent from the field and 26.7 percent from 3 — what he entered the game doing this season — and what he did Saturday night was shot selection. Simply put, better shot selection is going to lead to a higher percentage.

'A lot of the tough shots I've been taking in the past were because of myself,' Mitrou-Long said. 'I took one early coming off a screen that was super deep. It wasn't a good look at all and those are the shots I've been taking this year. Today I was just letting it come to me, guys were finding me and that's what got me going.'

Mitrou-Long had 22 points in the first half, and Iowa State needed every one of them while the Bulldogs (1-9) gave them all they could handle.

Drake led by as much as eight in the first half after a 3-pointer from Billy Wampler, who had 23 points on the night to lead the Bulldogs. Iowa State led just 42-40 at halftime while Drake shot 39.5 percent from the field and 42.9 percent from 3.

'You're not just going to come in and beat somebody by 20 out of the gate,' said Iowa State coach Steve Prohm. 'It takes a little bit of time. But every time we got it to six, seven, I thought Wampler made a tough couple shots down the stretch off that little curl and rover action that we run and we could never pull away.'

Drake's T.J. Thomas tied the game 76-76 on two free throws before Iowa State made its push. The Cyclones used a 21-4 run spanning the last five minutes and 45 seconds to end the game — Morris had 10 in the stretch.

Iowa State's Darrell Bowie made his first start with the Cyclones in place of Merrill Holden and had 12 points with eight rebounds in 27 minutes.

'(Mitrou-Long) just brought us together and told us, 'This is our final stretch, step it up and let's show them why they don't deserve to be on the court with us,' because we really don't feel like they deserve to,' Bowie said. 'So we really just turned it up on the defensive end and got some stops.

'I thought today we were just running and our offense was flowing instead of coming and settling in the half court. We were at our best when we were running.'

l Comments: montzdylan@gmail.com