Hlas: Another rotten stay at Hilton for Hawkeyes

AMES — For Iowa State, this one should go into a time capsule.

Iowa, on the other hand, may want to put the tape of its 83-82 loss to the Cyclones Thursday in a space capsule ... and send it on a one-way flight to Neptune.

Iowa State was Team Cockroach Thursday night in Hilton Coliseum, and that's meant in the best-possible way. Because the Hawkeyes couldn't kill it.

Iowa's Jarrod Uthoff splashed in a ridiculous, sensational 30 first-half points, a display that should rocket him into All-America discussion all by itself. It was a 20-minute performance that would have deserved its own wing in the Hawkeyes' Athletics Hall of Fame had the Hawkeyes hung on. But the Cyclones wouldn't die.

ISU's 14-point halftime deficit was upped to 20 less than four minutes into the second half. Iowa's Peter Jok went Full Uthoff, scoring 14 points in the first 5:05 of the half.

Jok, in a nod to what ISU's Georges Niang did last year in Carver-Hawkeye Arena, gave the fans a 'Shhhh' signal after hitting a jumper early in that 14-point run. He backed up his bravado with three 3-pointers in the next three minutes. Still, ISU wouldn't succumb.

The lead eventually went down, down, down. ISU cut it to one point on three occasions down the stretch. But when cool and heady seemed out of Iowa's grasp, Hawkeye senior point guard Mike Gesell made a series of cool, heady plays to steer his team to an 82-74 lead with 1:55 left.

Once and for all, ISU had been exterminated. Except it wasn't.

It was 82-76, 82-79. Niang made two free throws with :52 left, and it was 82-81.

As Niang took his foul shots, ISU center Jameel McKay was at the other end of the court with his back to Niang, gently pumping a fist at Cyclone students.

'I was just so into the game that I couldn't take it,' said McKay, who had 20 points and 12 rebounds. 'I had faith in Georges, but I just couldn't watch it.'

Neither could the people out there in Hawkeyeland. Their team's collapse was all too similar to the one it had here in its previous visit, two years ago. Especially in the last minute.

Monte Morris scored on a one-hand floater with 9.5 seconds left to put ISU on top. The Hawkeyes were stopped, a court-storm ensued.

That's three wins in a row for the Cyclones in this series, and seven straight over Iowa in this place that sounded and felt like it had a locomotive blasting through an AC/DC concert.

Iowa State played as unhinged a first-half as you could expect from a team ranked second in one major poll and fourth in the other. Maybe it was because Uthoff was scoring in almost every conceivable way. Stephen Curry himself would have applauded him.

Uthoff didn't score in the game's first 3 ½ minutes, but had eight points before the contest was five minutes old. He made five 3-pointers, hit intermediate jumpers, dunked twice, had a beautiful curl-in.

ISU students, who perhaps last said a good thing about the Hawkeyes during the Warren G. Harding administration, were overheard marveling at Uthoff's effort.

But many of those students camped out for three days outside the arena to make sure they got into the gym for this one. They weren't willing to let their team accept double-digit defeat.

Once the Cyclone players finally got on board, well, it wasn't so great to be a Hawkeye.

If you were looking at this objectively, say if you were from Walla Walla, Wash., watching this on ESPN2, you would have said this was a hugely entertaining game featuring two teams with a lot of veteran talent who could both win a lot of games before this season ends.

If you were a fan of one of the two teams, you were either levititating like Morris' game-winning shot or wanting to spit nails when reminded Morris' self-given Twitter handle is BigGame.

You've got your Rose Bowl berth, Iowa. You can remind your Cyclones frenemies of that this weekend and for a long time to come, and you will.

But when it comes to this basketball series, Iowa State can say the same thing it said last year.

Shhhh.