Iowa State got plenty to like on the stat sheet Sunday at Hilton Coliseum. The Cyclones forced turnovers, scored in the paint and made Creighton work for everything. But none of that could erase the damage done from deep, where the Bluejays held a decisive edge in an 83-80 exhibition win in front of an announced crowd of 13,601.
The loss came despite a furious late push from T.J. Otzelberger’s team, which erased a 19-point deficit and gave itself a shot at the end.
Sophomore forward Dominykas Pleta finished off a 7-0 run with a tip-in that trimmed the margin to 75-72 with 2:31 left, and Iowa State kept swinging until the final buzzer. Leon Bond III had the last look, but his contested 3-pointer at the horn missed, ending the Cyclones’ chance to tie it.
Jamarion Batemon led Iowa State with 15 points and four steals, while Bond, the UNI transfer, added 14 points and five rebounds. Taj Manning, the Kansas State transfer, gave the Cyclones 13 points and five rebounds off the bench.
Otzelberger pointed to the numbers that usually tilt games Iowa State’s way. His team won the points off turnovers battle 24-2 and outscored Creighton 44-18 in the paint. But the 3-point line told the real story, and the coach was blunt about how the game got away from his team early.
“We want to win the turnover battle,” said Cyclone head coach T.J. Otzelberger, whose team lost to the Bluejays in an exhibition game for the second straight season.
“We want to win the rebounding battle. We want to win points in the paint.
We want to win the free throw battle. Now, we won those in the end, but it took us a long time.
We put ourselves in a heck of a deficit (and) credit to Creighton. (It’s) a really good team and yet at the same time, we’ve got to control the things that we can, and we didn’t do a good enough job from a mental focus standpoint.”
Iowa State led for only 26 seconds all game, and for much of the second half it was chasing from well behind. Sunday’s result may not count in the standings, but the start and the finish still mattered as a test run.
“It felt really good (to come back),” said second-year guard Jamarion Batemon, who led ISU with 15 points and four steals. “It would have felt a lot better if we would have started the game that way, obviously.”
Otzelberger also singled out Manning, praising the way the former Wildcat has fit into the program. “(Manning’s) a guy who approaches work with a lunch pail and a hard hat,” said Otzelberger, who recruited the former Wildcat out of high school before landing him in the transfer portal. “Just thrilled that we have him on our team because he does so many winning things.”
Another major piece, point guard Tamin Lipsey, was not on the floor Sunday even though he was eligible for the exhibition. Otzelberger said that was the plan “all along” with Lipsey, who briefly played for the Indiana Pacers’ summer league team a few months ago before suffering a meniscus injury. Lipsey later joined a lawsuit in Indiana seeking a fifth season of college eligibility.
“He’s been in practice,” Otzelberger said. “He’s done a great job and we will integrate him with the first group each and every day in practice and we’ll be hopeful that we’ll be able to put him out there to play (in the final exhibition game at) Northwestern next Sunday. … That’s how we’ll continue to approach it with him and we’ll just take it from there.”
For Iowa State, the takeaway is simple: the late comeback showed resilience, but the early hole made the task too steep. The Cyclones open the season on Nov. 2 against Memphis at the Sanford Pentagon in Sioux Falls, S.D., and Otzelberger made clear his team has to bring the right edge from the opening tip.
“We’re gonna need to be a lot more intentional so not just at the end on the stat sheet, those (winning) things kind of swing our way,” Otzelberger said. “Those are things we have to really lean into and be committed to for the full 40 minutes.”
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