Arianna Jackson's sizzling start stokes No. 12 Iowa State's 87-60 win at Drake

DES MOINES — Des Moines’ hometown team didn’t have an answer for its hometown girl.

And that would be Iowa State junior guard Arianna Jackson, who drilled all four of her 3-pointers in the first quarter, helping the No. 12 Cyclones cruise to an 87-60 win Thursday night over Drake before a crowd of 4,026 at the Knapp Center.

“I grew up coming to games here, so it just means a lot,” said Jackson, who prepped at nearby Roosevelt High School. “It’s kind of a full circle moment. We knew we had to come out strong.”

ISU (6-0) led the Bulldogs (1-3), 25-5, after the first quarter, and 52-18 at halftime while winning in the Knapp Center for just the second time in the past five meetings there.

Audi Crooks — the reigning Associated Press national player of the week — paced the Cyclones with 22 points on 7-for-11 field goal shooting. Addy Brown and Jackson added 12 points apiece, and Jada Williams, Sydney Harris and Reagan Wilson each scored 11 points as six ISU players reached double figures in scoring. Brown also grabbed a career-high 15 rebounds one game after notching her first career triple-double.

“Audi and Addy are gonna do what they do,” Cyclones head coach Bill Fennelly said. “I don’t know that you can prevent (that). You can slow them down a little bit, but then it comes down to what are the other people gonna do?”

On Thursday, that proved to be a lot. Wilson drained a career-high three 3-pointers. Harris sank two — and also completed a personally-rare conventional 3-point play. Williams poked away three steals, as did reserve Evangelia Paulk in just seven minutes off playing time.

So ISU is chockfull of X-factors beyond what Brown and Crooks provide on a nightly basis.

“Our top 10 guys, or 11, I’m not afraid to put any of them in the game,” Fennelly said. “The challenge becomes, how far do you go with a kid who might be struggling because the next (shot) might go in, or — there’s a little bit of guesswork to it. And there’s a little bit of feel to it. … I’ve said many times: Coaches do not decide who plays. The players do. And if you play well, you’ll play. Reagan played well, she got to play. AJ made shots, so we ran plays for AJ. We have good depth and I think we have depth that is sustainable over time. I really believe that.”

What’s not sustainable is letting opponents go on 14-0 runs immediately after halftime — as the Bulldogs did to the delight of their crowd. The Cyclones still led by 20 points, but Fennelly said his team will dissect what went wrong in the third quarter and find ways to prevent it from happening again.

“I’m not real good at a halftime speech when you’re up 34 points,” Fennelly said. “‘Hey, keep playing, don’t worry’ – that was a really great one. But I think it was more what (Drake) did. We had two wide-open looks to start the third quarter and missed them. Audi missed a couple of free throws. … They were aggressive, and to their credit, they put us on our heels quite a bit.”

Just as Jackson did to her hometown team in the game’s opening 10 minutes. She missed tying her single-game career-high in 3-pointers and helped avenge an 85-73 loss to the Bulldogs two years ago at the Knapp Center.

“The first day of our scout, we had the score from (that game) put up on our scoreboard,” Jackson said. “Just kind of a little reminder of what happened, and just to move on from it and come in here with the right mindset, and go on from that and win.”

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