Iowa State’s Matt Thomas on an uptick with trip to Kansas looming

AMES - Matt Thomas is keeping his mind clear.

Iowa State's senior shooting guard has been scoring at a high clip, completing one of the best three-game stretches of his career. Yet after the last game against West Virginia, his frustration was evident.

Even though Thomas knows he's shooting the ball well, it's not enough.

'It's nice, but we've got to get wins,” Thomas said. 'That's all I'm concerned about. It's nice to see the ball go through the net, but we need to find ways to get wins especially late in games.”

Thomas has averaged 19.3 points, gone 16-for-22 from long range (5.3 per game) and has shot 71.4 percent from the field in Iowa State's last three games. Things were a bit rockier for the collective group.

In those last three games, the Cyclones (13-8, 5-4) survived Kansas State after leading by 20, went from up double digits to down 14 in a loss at Vanderbilt and saw their largest home loss in four years against West Virginia.

And there won't be any reprieve for Iowa State as it travels to No. 2 Kansas for a 1 p.m. tipoff Saturday (ESPN). When Thomas hits from outside with regularity though, the Cyclones offense tends to open up considerably.

'His level of confidence is big and Matt is a good confidence guy,” said point guard Monte Morris. 'When his confidence is high he can shoot with the best of them. Once we get stops it's hard to find him in transition, especially when we're putting pressure on the rim and finding him for shots.”

Iowa State is at its best when it plays in transition and looks ahead to shooters like Thomas, although it hasn't found a way to do that regularly.

In the first half of the last three games, Iowa State has opened up double-digit leads in two and gone toe-to-toe with the KenPom.com No. 3 adjusted offensive efficiency team. The Cyclones lose their heads when they devolve into strictly isolation ball with no side-to-side passes.

Iowa State coach Steve Prohm said Thursday's practice would be working for at least an hour on nothing but half-court offense.

'I've got to get uncomfortable with these guys to where we do it, and then they've got to change too,” Prohm said. 'They need to change to where we are getting a good shot every time. The problem is bad shots lead to bad defense and bad shots lead to frustration by everybody. We've got to limit that.”

Prohm and Morris are on the same page for the most part, but the senior point guard took the half court idea a step further. Individual matchups, at times, can be exploited without much side-to-side action.

'There's a pro and a con to it. We all break off stuff even in practice,” Morris said. 'Sometimes it trickles down to crucial parts in the game, but you can't nitpick one thing because if we make a shot when you break it off nobody is going to say nothing. So we've just got to pick and choose and not be robots at the same time doing that.”

The Jayhawks (20-2, 8-1) won their 51st consecutive home game Thursday and have lost only nine home games in coach Bill Self's 226 games at the helm. Kansas beat Iowa State 76-72 three weeks ago, scoring 52 points in the paint.

The Cyclones will be without senior forward Darrell Bowie, who was suspended for not 'meeting program standards.” He is expected to be back with the team Sunday.

'We've put ourselves in a position to win games in my three years that I've been here,” Thomas said. 'It's just making the plays late in the game to finish.”

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