Rob Gray

Iowa State women’s basketball coach Bill Fennelly is convinced most of the league’s teams could potentially challenge for the Big 12 tournament title.

Gabe Kalscheur wasn’t surprised the revamped Iowa State men’s basketball team — which starts Big 12 tournament play at 11:30 a.m. Thursday against No. 10 Baylor — could come together and have success on a scale few viewed as possible.

Ashley Joens recorded her 62nd career double-double to help the No. 23-ranked Iowa State women’s basketball team lambast Texas Tech, 76-52, before a Hilton Coliseum Senior Day crowd of 11,858.

Adversity comes in a variety of forms — and the Iowa State men’s basketball team in the teeth of it as it prepares for Saturday’s regular-season finale at No. 7 Baylor.

Iowa State finished third last season after racking up plenty of dual meet wins that didn’t translate into tournament success. Cyclones head coach Kevin Dresser expects that to change Saturday and Sunday at the Big 12 Championships and beyond.

Ashley Joens — who rewrote the Iowa State women’s basketball record book — has become the program’s all-time leading scorer and rebounder by a wide margin and will play her last regular-season game at Hilton Coliseum on Saturday.

Iowa State men’s basketball coach T.J. Otzelberger announced Wednesday afternoon in a statement that Caleb Grill had been dismissed from the team “due to a failure to meet the program’s expectations.”

The Iowa State Cyclones did a lot of the things that led to a 4-0 start in Big 12 men’s basketball play and a top-12 ranking nationally Monday night against West Virginia. They simply didn’t do any of them well enough to win.

Inside or outside. On the move or spotted up. Iowa State women’s basketball all-time leading scorer Ashley Joens was so good, it didn’t matter where her shots came from in an 85-56 win over TCU.

The reeling Iowa State men’s basketball team lost for the fifth time in the past six games, 61-50 at home against last-place Oklahoma.

Morgan Kane’s been asked to play many roles in her Iowa State career. She’s back in the spotlight, coming off a season-high 16 point-performance in the Cyclones’ 73-68 loss Wednesday at Oklahoma State.

The travel-weary and 23rd-ranked Iowa State Cyclones seek to solidify themselves in the top half of the Big 12 men’s basketball conference by winning two straight at home, beginning with Saturday’s 11 a.m. matchup with last-place, but dangerous Oklahoma.

While Iowa State’s offensive staff underwent an overhaul in the offseason, the defensive coaches remained largely the same.

One thing the Iowa State women’s basketball program had never done is avoid getting swept in the regular season by one or more Big 12 foes. Until now. And that’s not a trivial matter as the Cyclones prepare for a tough four-game stretch to close the regular-season slate.

Thirty-four days have passed since Iowa State beat Texas, 78-67, to start 5-0 in Big 12 men’s basketball play for the first time in 23 years. The No. 23 Cyclones have lost six of nine conference games since that triumph, but now come full circle with the eighth-ranked and league-leading Longhorns.