Rob Gray

Jaylin Noel’s bigger, faster and smarter. He’s also seamlessly stepped into a leadership role as an Iowa State junior.

Lexi Donarski — the 2022 Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year — will look to play elsewhere for her senior season.

The good news for Iowa State: Quarterback Hunter Dekkers and most of the team’s key contributors in 2022 are healthy this spring. The not-so-good news: Several others are dealing with the lingering effects of injuries and will be limited in terms of on-the-field activity for most if not all of the spring’s 15 practices.

Iowa State women’s basketball star Stephanie Soares won’t be coming back for another year.

Will McDonald could be the first Iowa State football player drafted in the first round since 1973.

Ashley Joens, Iowa State’s all-time leading scorer and rebounder took the floor for what proved to be the last time in an ISU uniform Saturday, as her fifth-seeded team fell, 80-73, to 12th-seeded Toledo at Thompson-Boling Arena in Knoxville, Tenn.

Denae Fritz is back in Tennessee, ready to help lead No. 5-seed Iowa State against 12-seed Toledo at 2:30 p.m. Saturday in a first-round NCAA women’s basketball tournament matchup at Thompson-Boling Arena in Knoxville.

Iowa State senior David Carr — and the -seeded 165-pounder at the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships, which run Thursday through Saturday in Tulsa, Okla. — seeks to reach the top of the national podium for the second time in his storied Cyclone career.

Iowa State women’s basketball coach Bill Fennelly’s career had come full circle, as the surging fifth-seed Cyclones will face No. 12-seed Toledo — the first school that gave him a head coaching job 35 years ago — in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

Iowa State is seeded sixth and will play either Pittsburgh or Mississippi State in the first round of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

Former Iowa City High standout Ashley Joens led Iowa State to a Big 12 tournament title in a 61-51 win over Texas.

Ashley Joens became the 14th player in NCAA women’s basketball history to score 3,000 points in Iowa State’s 82-72 Big 12 tournament semifinal win over No. 14 Oklahoma.

Prognosticators vary, but the general consensus has the Iowa State men’s basketball team anywhere from a No. 5 seed to a No. 7 seed in the NCAA Tournament going into Selection Sunday.

The Iowa State Cyclones erased an eight-point halftime deficit in Saturday’s Big 12 tournament semifinal against No. 3 Kansas, but couldn’t sustain that energy and fell, 71-58, at the T-Mobile Center.

The once-struggling Iowa State men’s basketball team has beaten Baylor in back-to-back games after dropping six of its previous seven. The Cyclones advanced to the Big 12 tournament semifinals with a 78-72 win Thursday.