Shorthanded No. 11 Iowa State women fall, 83-70, to West Virginia at Hilton

AMES — Life without Addy Brown and Arianna Jackson for the No. 11 Iowa State women’s basketball team began with slick-shooting success, but ended in a torrent of turnovers.

The Cyclones — who will be without Brown and Jackson for a while — simply couldn’t handle West Virginia’s always-tough pressure as they tumbled to their third straight loss, 83-70, Sunday before a crowd of 10,009 at Hilton Coliseum.

“Our guard play was not very good and their guard play was very good,” said ISU head coach Bill Fennelly, whose team (14-3, 2-3 Big 12) lost 25 turnovers against the Mountaineers (14-3, 4-1). “You can’t turn the ball over 25 times, and we’re trying to play people that maybe aren’t ready for the moment, but we don’t really have a choice.”

Star center Audi Crooks scored 22 points on 8-for-9 field goal shooting while notching her seventh double-double of the season. Forward Sydney Harris added 15 points and guard Reagan Wilson chipped in 11 while playing 28 minutes without coughing up a turnover.

ISU led by as many as seven points in the first quarter, but that’s when the turnovers started coming in bunches. West Virginia held a 40-39 halftime lead, but used a quick 9-0 run to build a double-digit lead that never dipped below four points over the final 18 minutes.

“We’re down bodies that are big pieces, so no one feels sorry for us,” said Harris, who matched her season high in points and made 3-pointers (three). “We just have to pull close together and figure out things. Addy is a big piece scoring, rebounding, stuff like that, so trying to get people comfortable enough that didn’t have as a big of a role — they’ve got to step up, and I think we’re ready.”

Brown, who’s been dealing with a back injury, underwent an MRI on Friday, and the medical staff determined that she should sit out her second straight game — and perhaps several more to come.

“The medical team’s making some decisions today (and) they’re gonna look at our options, but this is not a short-term situation,” Fennelly said.

Brown averaged 13.2 points, a ten-best nine rebounds and 5.8 assists in the first 15 games of the season. Her wide-ranging skills make everything run more smoothly for the Cyclones, so her prolonged absence — along with Jackson’s — will require ongoing adjustments to be made.

“They are different without (Brown),” West Virginia head coach Mark Kellogg said. “No question.”

But there were bright spots for ISU, which will seek to end its first three-game skid in two seasons on Wednesday at Colorado. Wilson’s three 3-pointers came in key moments and her confidence shone on both ends of the floor. She also streamed in for an offensive rebound and putback that epitomized her hustle and made the score, 49-45, midway through the third quarter.

“It’s always nice to see your hard work pay off, but at the end of the day we didn’t get the job done,” Wilson said. “It’s still a hard one to swallow when you don’t get the win.”

Especially when several of the turnovers weren’t necessarily forced by the Mountaineers’ vaunted pressure. The Cyclones coughed up 11 turnovers in a span of 11:55 that helped West Virginia build that first double-digit lead that ballooned to as many as 17 points.

“It’s good defense, it’s bad decision making, it’s bad coaching,” Fennelly said. “It’s all of the above.”

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