Iowa State loses to Texas Tech, goes one-and-done in the Big 12 Tournament for a third-straight year

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Iowa State has done so much this season to put itself back at the level it enjoyed for the better part of the previous decade. The Cyclones have gone from 2-22 a year ago to NCAA tournament-bound now.

At the site of some of its greatest triumphs, though, it was clear there was still plenty of work ahead to totally recapture the glory years.

Fourteenth-ranked Texas Tech pounded the Cyclones, 72-41, Wednesday in the quarterfinals of the Big 12 tournament to give Iowa State its third-straight loss heading into Selection Sunday.

At 20-12 with a bevy of quality wins and no bad losses on the resume, Iowa State is expected to be among the field when the NCAA tournament announces its 68 teams, but the Cyclones will enter the highest-stakes portion of the season on a slide.

Iowa State scored 36 points — its fewest in a game in more than 60 years — last week in a home loss to Oklahoma State and followed that up with a road loss to No. 3 Baylor, which led by as many as 25 but had to sweat out the final minutes against a resilient Cyclone team.

Texas Tech handed the Cyclones their third-straight loss in emphatic fashion.

The first half was a house of horrors for the Cyclones, who shot 28.6 percent from the field, 20 percent from 3 and turned it over 10 times. Star senior Izaiah Brockington, who was third in the Big 12 in scoring, missed his first six shots from the floor as Iowa State's offense remained grounded.

And it didn't really get any better from there.

The offense continued to sputter while the Red Raiders had little trouble beating the Iowa State offense to lead by as many as 33.

Brockington finished 3 of 16 from the floor for seven points. The Cyclones shot 31 percent from the field, 20 percent from 3 and committed 20 turnovers against Texas Tech's best-in-the-country defense.

It was the third-straight one-and-done appearance for the Cyclones at the Big 12 tournament, which they won four times between 2014 and 2019.

While the loss sends Iowa State into Selection Sunday this weekend on a sour note, it likely did little damage to the Cyclones' NCAA tournament bid. With nine Quadrant 1 wins — among the most in the country — the Cyclones are almost certain to get their first NCAA tournament spot since 2019 and second since 2017.

Bracket experts have pegged Iowa State somewhere between a seven and nine seed in recent days, and that is likely to remain significantly unchanged with the loss. Iowa State, though, could slide if teams with similar profiles have more successful conference tournaments and leapfrog the Cyclones.

Travis Hines covers Iowa State University sports for the Des Moines Register and Ames Tribune. Contact him at thines@amestrib.com or  (515) 284-8000. Follow him at @TravisHines21.