Dunks not enough to put a charge in No. 4 Cyclones

AMES — One interesting question began to emerge in No. 4 Iowa State’s otherwise sleepy 78-53 win over Eastern Illinois on Sunday at Hilton Coliseum.

Who would lead the Cyclones in dunks?

Fittingly, that unofficial duel between forward Blake Buchanan and guard Killyan Toure ended in a 3-3 tie.

“It’s always fun,” said Buchanan, who scored a season-high 14 points as ISU improved to 11-0. “You have a dunk-fast break to kind of get the crowd behind us, a little bit of an energy play to get us going.”

Those infusions of zest proved to be fleeting, however. The Cyclones trailed the Panthers (2-8) for more than five minutes in the first half before a Milan Momcilovic 3-pointer capped a 16-5 run that gave them a 44-28 edge at the break.

Momcilovic led four ISU players in double figures with 18 points on 6-for-11 shooting. The junior sank two of his six 3-point attempts — which is a very low percentage for him, but a high rate for the Cyclones on Sunday, who shot a season-worst 4-for-23 (17.4 percent) from beyond the arc.

“I think that was probably one of the worst performances we’ve had all year, to be honest,” said Momcilovic, who is shooting 49.5 percent from long range this season. “I just think defensively and offensively we weren’t clicking. But we got the win, so that’s good, and we got some learning points to take from this game and just move forward.”

ISU could be excused for furnishing an unusually muted Hilton crowd of 13,876 with less energy than usual, as the Cyclones are coming off an emotional Cy-Hawk win over Iowa with finals week looming.

But head coach T.J. Otzelberger, as always, eschews excuses.

“We’ve had some big games, we’ve got finals coming, all of that’s valid,” Otzelberger said. “At the same time, we only get so many opportunities to play at Hilton Coliseum in front of our fans and show what we’re about. And we want to make sure that every one of those opportunities is our absolute best in terms of effort, focus, the things that we control.”

The Cyclones won their 40th consecutive non-conference home game and are 11-0 for the third-time in program history — and second time under Otzelberger. Joshua Jefferson added 11 points and a game-high nine rebounds as he narrowly missed his fifth double-double of the season. Buchanan scored 12 or more points for the fourth time in the past six games, and has grabbed at least five rebounds all but once in that span.

“There’s never a question of effort when it comes to Blake Buchanan,” Otzelberger said of the 6-10 Virginia transfer. “He’s relentless. He’s tough. … We continue to see that production every game out in terms of how hard he plays, how much he gets done. He’s such a winner.”

So is ISU as a whole, despite Sunday’s less-vigorous-than-usual performance.

“We should never be questioning whether that was our best effort, right?” Otzelberger said. “There (are) other things that whether it’s not a great shooting night, whether we were more careless with the ball than we’d like, but from an effort standpoint, we need to be an 11 out of 10. And (Sunday) we weren’t.”

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