Cyclones will try to put road loss behind as Texas comes to town

AMES - Walking off the plane in Iowa after suffering a road loss to Texas Tech, the Iowa State men's basketball team spurned a chance to go home. Instead most players wound up at the Sukup Basketball Complex and watched some film.

'We were up here all night. Just about everybody,” senior Dustin Hogue said. 'The whole team came in. I don't know who wasn't there, but there were a lot of seats filled up.”

Following the five-point loss to the Red Raiders, team leaders organized a player-only meeting immediately afterward. That, combined with the effort in the film room on Saturday night is all in an effort to turn the page to 12th-ranked Iowa State's matchup with No. 18 Texas on Monday in Hilton Coliseum.

ISU Coach Fred Hoiberg admitted that while he was a player, he and his teammates never had an all-night film session, but nitpicking the mistakes while they're fresh could be beneficial. The reason for getting the whole team to come in together was pretty simple.

'A lot of guys felt that loss and nobody wants to feel that again, so a lot of guys came in last night and watched film and pointed their finger not at everyone else, but their mistakes,” Hogue said.

'It's all hopefully part of the learning process for this group that you don't go through that again,” Hoiberg added.

While the loss isn't the end of world for Iowa State (14-4, 4-2), it magnifies the game against Texas (14-5, 3-3), which is coming off a home loss to Kansas. If the Cyclones' aspirations of winning a regular-season conference title are to come to fruition, bouncing back from Saturday's loss soon will be key.

The Longhorns will come to Hilton Coliseum boasting a lot of size, and with Big 12 championship hopes of their own. The turnaround for Iowa State to play Texas just two days after losing raises the stakes.

'It just makes our uphill battle a lot more uphill,” junior Georges Niang said. 'Now we have to go win games where they're not really gimmies, they're actually ranked powerhouses that are going to have a good showing and a good crowd.”

Hoiberg didn't specify if there would be any changes to the starting lineup, but would evaluate it in practice. Iowa State jumped out to an early lead, but fell off the map offensively, allowing Texas Tech to go on a 20-1 run over roughly a five-minute span.

Hogue knows the key is not letting an opponent's run splinter the team. A slow start also plagued Iowa State in a loss at Baylor.

'One man's not going to stop anybody,” Hogue said. 'I think if we come out and we just play solid and rebound the ball and contest 3-pointers, they don't get the run that they made.”

'You've got to find a way to get over big emotion wins and you've got to find a way to get over tough losses, too,” Hoiberg said. 'Those are the two toughest things to do in this business.”

Tipoff for Iowa State and Texas is scheduled for 8 p.m. in Hilton Coliseum, and will be televised on ESPN as a part of Big Monday.