Jada Williams' career-high 44 points help Iowa State rout Cincinnati, 93-58, at Hilton

AMES — As the shot clock wound down, Jada Williams’ eyes narrowed.

Iowa State’s dynamic point guard shook her defender, stepped back and let the 3-pointer fly.

3-2-1 swish.

“I knew it was going in,” she said.

The horn blared. Williams — who obliterated her previous career-high in scoring with an ultra-efficient 44 points — flexed and posed as if to say, ‘I refuse to lose tonight.’

So, the Cyclones didn’t.

Instead, ISU (15-5, 3-5 Big 12) banished a rare five-game losing streak and pummeled Cincinnati, 93-68, Wednesday before a jubilant crowd of 9,038 at Hilton Coliseum.

“I just wanted to win — and I wanted to win by a lot,” said Williams, whose team lost, 71-63, at Cincinnati two weeks ago. “That meant something to us. That was a statement that we sent. So I’m super-proud of how everyone responded to adversity.”

Especially fellow starting guard Arianna Jackson, who made her stirring return to the lineup just two weeks after suffering what appeared to be a season-ending knee injury against the Bearcats. But her ACL was intact and she attacked her rehab. She ended up with 11 points and a team-best eight rebounds while helping to space the floor offensively and providing her typical stifling on-ball defense.

“It’s really hard to sit on the bench and watch,” Jackson said. “So just being out there means everything.”

So did the start-to-finish rout, which Williams helped key with a 17-2 that built a double-digit lead in the first quarter that slipped to seven just once. That’s when Williams took over yet again by drilling back-to-back 3-pointers. The Bearcats (7-13, 2-6) never mounted another run of any consequence. She finished an astonishing 15-for-22 from the field while matching a career-high in 3-pointers with six on just 10 attempts. Her previous career high of 28 points came in the two-point loss to Baylor that started the Cyclones’ recent skid — but she needed 28 shots to hit that benchmark.

“You know, you kind of watch it like, ‘God dang, that rim is awfully big for her right now,’” Cincinnati head coach Katrina Merriweather said. “And the one (Williams made) right at the end of the third quarter, she let it go and before it went in, I said, ‘That’s going in.’ The kid was unconscious.”

Williams also doled out eight assists while losing just two turnovers. Star center Audi Crooks added 24 points and sparkplug Evangelia Paulk grabbed seven rebounds while swiping a game-high four steals in a season-high 31 and a half minutes off the bench.

“The energy that (Paulk) brings our team, or brought to our team tonight was — no one else on our team could do it,” ISU head coach Bill Fennelly said.

As for Williams’ absurd numbers? Even she was surprised. She said she might have scored 39 points in a seventh grade game, but she’d never topped 40 — and certainly not as efficiently as she did on Wednesday.

That raised her already lofty ceiling while simultaneously bolstering the Cyclones’ once-flagging confidence.

“If she can be a threat from the 3-point line at all, she’s really hard to guard, because she can go by you,” Fennelly said. “44 points is great. But 44 points with how she did it was pretty amazing.”

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