No. 12 Texas A&M women beat Iowa State 59-33

AMES - Even Texas A&M coach Gary Blair had to perform a double take.

The scoreboard showed his defending national champion Aggies routing Iowa State 59-33 in Saturday's Big 12 game played before 11,658 similarly shocked fans at Hilton Coliseum.

It didn't lie.

“I kept looking and I said, ‘That score cannot be right,'” Blair said.

Painfully, for the Cyclones, it was.

ISU (9-6, 0-4) had scored as few as 33 points just once in the Coach Bill Fennelly era - managing the same output in a 68-33 setback, Feb. 25, 2004, at Kansas State.

The Cyclones shot a season-low 28.9 percent from the field, trailed by 18 points at halftime, and suffered their most lopsided loss since falling 80-49 Jan. 23, 2008, at Kansas State.

“Obviously, our offense is pitiful,” Fennelly said. “That's a brilliant statement. But you can't miss front ends of one-and-one. You can't miss layups. You can't miss open 3-point shots.”

Chelsea Poppens led ISU with 10 points and eight rebounds while battling early foul trouble and physical A&M defenders.

“They just kept pushing us around and we weren't being tougher,” Poppens said. “We were just kind of backing down.”

ISU guard/forward Brynn Williamson added nine points - all on 3-pointers - and sparked a late 8-0 run that came far too late.

“Their effort was there (Saturday) and ours wasn't,” Williamson said.

The Aggies (11-4, 2-2) seized control early, using a 10-0 run to surge to a 14-4 lead.

The Cyclones countered briefly with a 10-4 spurt, but A&M answered with an 8-0 splurge, eventually taking a 33-15 lead by halftime on Tyra White's buzzer-beating 3-pointer.

“That's a tough shot,” said Blair. “But it's the shot she hit to win the (2011) national championship.”

The Cyclones stand 0-4 in conference play for the first time since the 1994-95 team started its Big Eight slate 0-9.

“I feel bad for our fans because they've watched this program grow over the years,” said Fennelly, who took over the program before the 1995-96 season. “All I can say and what I told our kids is, ‘I don't know what's going to happen in the next 14 games or when the season ends. But we're going to finish this the way we should. We're going to play hard, we're going to work hard.

“And when the season's over people will make decisions. That's part of life. But there's no excuses. We've got to coach a hell of a lot better and that's the bottom line.”