Iowa State gets Iona in NCAA Tournament

AMES — Iowa State knows heartbreak on the highest stage. Avoiding that feeling at all cost is priority No. 1.

The Cyclones men's basketball team found itself on the wrong end of the annual 'One Shining Moment' video nearly 365 days ago in a one-point loss to UAB that has eaten at the guts of the players ever since.

They'll have the chance to get over that loss when they take the floor in a school-record fifth-straight NCAA tournament appearance.

Iowa State exceeded most bracketologists' expectations and was selected as a No. 4 seed in the Midwest Region of the NCAA tournament and gets 13th-seeded Iona in the first round in Denver at 1 p.m. Thursday (TBS) — only the second matchup between the two teams ever. In the last 31 years, there have been 25 upsets of 13-seed versus 4-seeds.

Should the Cyclones go 2-0 in the Rocky Mountain State, they would move onto Chicago for the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight rounds. But you'd be hard pressed to find anybody in Sukup Basketball Complex who is looking that far ahead right now.

'One thing I'm taking away from this year is last year at this moment we were on top of the world,' said senior Jameel McKay. 'Three or four days later, we were probably at one of the lowest moments of our lives. You can't take anything for granted and you've got to take it one game at a time and focus on that one opponent. That's what we're going to do.'

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The Gaels (22-10) and Cyclones (21-11) have only met once before — Iona won at Hilton Coliseum by 17 in 2005 — but both teams share similar philosophies: play fast. Iona is No. 31 on KenPom.com in points per game (79.6), 60th in adjusted offense (110.4) and 44th in adjusted tempo (72.4) while Iowa State is 15th, 3rd and 54th in those categories.

Iona started its season 4-6 but captured the MAAC tournament championship and is riding an eight-game winning streak. Iowa State ended the season with eight top-50 RPI wins — seventh most in the country — with no losses to teams not in the NCAA tournament field.

'You've got to have a confidence about you, a swagger about you that you're not just going to let something that happened before happen again,' said senior Georges Niang. 'That should be with everything in your power and will to not let that happen.

'They're a really great team. They really get up and down and really do a great job of sharing the basketball and can really score. Obviously we're going to have our hands full, but it's their will against ours.'

Senior A.J. English is the driving force behind the Iona offensive attack. At 6-foot-4 and 190 pounds, he averages 22.4 points, 6.2 assists and 5.0 rebounds in 35.8 minutes per game while shooting 42.9 percent from the field. The Gaels also like to shoot the 3 and are 37.2 percent from long range with five players shooting 35 percent or better.

'It'll be a high scoring game I'm sure,' said Iowa State coach Steve Prohm. 'Both teams obviously love offense and they like to get up and down so we've got to do a good job of getting back on defense first and foremost against any good offensive team.'

Drawing a game at high altitude against a running team might not be the ideal situation for a short-benched ISU team, but Prohm is hoping to get to get to Denver on Tuesday night and get quick workouts in on the Pepsi Center court. Junior Matt Thomas has heard some good things about the arena and altitude though, too.

'One thing I remember is Coach Fred (Hoiberg) said when he was here that the Pepsi Center was his favorite gym to shoot in (in the NBA) and that it's a shooters' gym,' Thomas said. 'I'm looking forward to it.'