ISU's Kane moving on after ejection

 By Rob Gray

 Correspondent

 AMES - Iowa State guard DeAndre Kane retreated to the locker room, ejected from Wednesday's wild 90-88 win at BYU for a flagrant foul committed with 3:28 left.

With no TV to watch and no mobile phone immediately available, Kane sweated out the final minutes essentially in the dark.

“Every couple seconds (ISU director of basketball operations) Micah (Byers) was coming in and telling me what was going on,” said Kane, who added the poke to the Cougars' Eric Mika's eye that prompted the ejection was unintentional. “I had faith in my team from the jump. When they ejected me I told them to pull it through and they said, ‘We're going to win this one for you.' So I knew they've come through.”

The foul-plagued No. 21 Cyclones did just that thanks to three straight clutch baskets from forward Georges Niang, along with key contributions from freshmen Monte Morris and Matt Thomas, as well as sparingly-used big man Daniel Edozie - whose block of BYU star Tyler Haws' shot with eight seconds left helped preserve the road win.

“I knew (Edozie) would be ready when his name was called,” said ISU coach Fred Hoiberg, whose team (4-0) plays host to Missouri-Kansas City at 7 p.m. Monday. “And the guy, and I just watched film with him, Monte Morris - he made a heck of play when Haws came off the ball screen. He was wide open for a second and Monte went over and stopped the penetration and then Daniel stepped up and got the block.”

Hoiberg often speaks of facing and overcoming adversity and the Cyclones hit on both aspects of that equation often against the Cougars (4-1).

Besides Kane's ejection, Melvin Ejim fouled out with 1:42 left and Dustin Hogue drew his fifth whistle 29 seconds later.

Kane and Ejim each scored 21 points.

Hogue held Haws 10 points below his scoring average.

Ejim's trip to the bench included a brief, but caught-on-camera obscene gesture directed at fans - an action the senior leader immediately apologized for.

Friday, the Big 12 publicly reprimanded Ejim, the league's scholar-athlete of the year last season.

“He apologized not only to their fans and our fans and everybody watching the game, but he came up to me and apologized for - he felt he took something away from that win, with a lot of the focus being on that,” Hoiberg said. “But look, these kids, they learn from it. Melvin, his record speaks for itself. He's the best kid I've certainly coached and he's all about the right things. So I can promise that won't ever happen again.”

Kane reiterated that the poke to Mika's eye was not a purposeful action; that he was trying to prevent an easy basket and a pump fake altered his timing.

“I'm glad to hear he's OK,” Kane said.

Kane added that his Twitter timeline became “crazy” for about 48 hours after the game, but he's moved on.

“If anybody thinks that was (done) purposely, I don't know, maybe they're crazy,” Kane said. “I was trying to make a basketball play. That was not intentional. If I'm trying to poke somebody in the eye playing basketball, I shouldn't be playing basketball. I was trying to go for the ball. If they couldn't see that, I don't know what else to tell you.”