Iowa State super senior Nate Heise's focusing on "fun" as exhibition at Creighton looms

AMES — A sense of joy. Unbridled enthusiasm. Deep gratitude.

Iowa State men’s basketball coach T.J. Otzelberger’s exhorting his sixth-year senior guard, Nate Heise, to exhibit all of the above in his curtain call season as a collegian — and so far, that message has landed and stuck.

“It’s my last year and you can either look at it as, ‘Man, I’ve gotta do this all over again,’ or, ‘This is my last opportunity to do this,’” said Heise, who hopes to showcase those qualities and more for the No. 16 Cyclones in Friday’s 7:30 p.m. exhibition game against No. 23 Creighton in Omaha. ‘I think some days I was on both ends of the spectrum.”

Not anymore.

The 6-foot-5 former Northern Iowa transfer met with Otzelberger repeatedly in the summer to discuss how he could make the most out of his final season. Heise shot a sizzling 7-for-9 (78 percent) from 3-point range in the postseason as a junior, and could serve as one of ISU’s X-factors as it tries to reach the NCAA Tournament for the fifth straight time under Otzelberger. But only if he plays with tenacity rather than tentativeness — no matter his role, no matter his minutes.

“When you really look at it, this is gonna be the most fun it’s gonna be,” said Otzelberger, who will face mentor and former ISU head coach Greg McDermott of Creighton not just on Friday, but also in roughly a month in a game that counts in Las Vegas. “I know there (are) guys on our team with aspirations to play at the next level and that’s great. Everybody I’ve talked to (who) plays at the next level said these are the most fun times. These are the best times. These are the times that you’re most connected to your fan base, your teammates, and you have the most fun. So, man, what I want for Nate Heise is to have the most fun senior year. I want everybody to be able to look at Nate Heise and say, ‘That guys is having so much fun out there playing basketball. He has a smile on his face, his competitive spirit, his energy with is teammates — nobody maximized having fun (in his) last year than Nate Heise did.’”

So how much fun will Heise and his teammates have against McDermott’s Bluejays? That depends on how they play, of course, and how well they meet Otzelberger’s exacting standards.

“The first thing is win the game,” Otzelberger said. “Everything’s about winning the game, so when we practice, every drill we’re trying to win. Everything that we do, we’re trying to win. So regardless of (if) this counts on our record or doesn’t — which it doesn’t — our objective is to win in everything we do.”

After all, winning is fun — and having fun equates to winning for Heise. He’ll start on Friday alongside freshman guard Killyan Toure, junior Milan Momcilovic, junior Blake Buchanan and senior Joshua Jefferson, as starting point guard Tamin Lipsey remains out for at least a couple of weeks because of an MCL sprain suffered late last month.

“I feel great about how things are going right now, and I love how our team is,” Heise said. “I’m kind of just taking it all in.”

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