Iowa State faces an LSU team in turmoil in the NCAA Tournament

AMES — Izaiah Brockington has personal experience with tumultuous times within a program.

So when the current Iowa State star and former Penn State Nittany Lion was asked Sunday about how abrupt head coaching changes can affect a team, he spoke with familiarity on the subject.

“Having been through something like that last season, you like to think that it doesn’t affect you as a team, and you’d like to think that it’s not really a distraction, but it is,” said Brockington, whose 11th-seeded Cyclones (20-12) will face No. 6-seed LSU, which fired its head coach Saturday, in Friday’s 6:20 p.m. NCAA Tournament first-round game in Milwaukee.

LSU fired Will Wade after the NCAA filed a notice of allegations recently that outlined at least a spate of major rules violations in recent years. So the Tigers (22-11) enter the postseason seemingly adrift, with former assistant Kevin Nickelberry as their interim head coach. Brockington’s experience with similar turmoil came in October of 2020. Then-Penn State head coach Pat Chambers resigned after an internal investigation into allegations of inappropriate conduct. That left Brockington and the rest of the Nittany Lions facing a change right before the start of the season.

“Everybody has their own feelings about the coach that left and the new person that’s stepping in,” said Brockington, a senior who earned first-team All-Big 12 honors this season. “And everybody has their own vision, especially coaches, (about) the direction that the team should go. Everybody has their ideas, so having somebody new come in can definitely be a distraction.”

But will it be disruptive for the Tigers? It’s hard to say — and ISU head coach T.J. Otzelberger said as much after Sunday’s selection show. He’s expecting LSU to continue to play its physical, opportunistic and defense-driven brand of basketball no matter who’s coaching the team, and regardless of any sense of uncertainty that may pervade the locker room.

“They turn people over at a really high rate with their ball pressure,” Otzelberger said. “Their defense, according to (KenPom) is top-five in the country. Ours, right now is (ranked No.) 10. So you’re dealing with two teams that try to have a similar style in terms of turning people over and generating points off those turnovers.”

Digging deeper into that statistic reveals that the Tigers rank second nationally in defensive turnover percentage and the Cyclones rank sixth.

So while Friday marks the beginning of what senior ISU big man George Conditt IV dubbed “a new season,” the Cyclones will play a team that mirrors the defensive profile of most Big 12 teams.

“This is a new season,” Otzelberger said. “It is a chance to reinvent ourselves in a good way. This is the time of the year where everybody’s zero and zero. There’s a reason why it’s so exciting. We all love being part of it and we’re fortunate to be playing in it. So we know there’s gonna be a lot of upsets and we need to do everything between now and Friday to put ourselves in position to be one of them.”

Coaches — whether permanent or temporary — help with matchups and preparation. The players’ execution defines outcomes. And once the ball is tipped, any distractions likely melt away.

“It’s really special to even be there,” Brockington said. “But once you get there, anything could happen.”