Well, it honestly was not as bad of an outcome as I thought might occur. Texas is the kind of team that has such good athletes and play such good defense, that I honestly thought the Cyclones were in for a 35+ point loss here. I missed most of the first half, but from what I heard, the team really played with some fire in the first half. I know I am echoing myself, but how many teams on 9 game (now 10 game) losing streaks play hard? It says a lot about the character of the team.
Unsurprisingly, shooting was the key in this game. The Cyclones took 4 more shot attempts than the Longhorns, but shot only 33% from the floor, including 25% from beyond the arc. Texas, on the other hand, shot 47% from the floor. Outside of that, Texas outrebounded Iowa State 45 to 33, and got to the free throw line 21 times compared to Iowa State's 8 trips to the charity stripe.
Individually, nobody from Iowa State had a great game. Christopherson did shoot 50%, but took the 4th fewest shot attempts from the starters. Texas obviously did a good job denying him shots. Anytime you have a game where DG and Jake are shooting 52% of the team's shots, it likely isn't going to be the greatest outcome in the game. Texas forced Iowa State to try and score with their worst shooters, and took their best shooters out of the game. That's what good teams do.
On the Texas side, Jordan Hamilton (20 points, 8 rebounds), Tristan Thompson (17 points, 14 rebounds, 3 blocks), and Gary Johnson (14 points, 12 rebounds) had big games. There was no way to expect Iowa State to be able to match up size-wise and athleticism-wise with these guys.
I knew this was going to be a rough-go, and am optimistic about the game on Saturday to be honest. Losing streaks are no fun, but if the team plays hard against Nebraska like they've played the 3 games, I think a favorable result is quite possible.
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