No. 5 Iowa State won its season opener by 39 points, but that doesn’t mean coach TJ Otzelbarger is completely satisfied.
The group mentality is to always find areas to improve, and that will be the case when Iowa State (1-0) wins against Kansas City (2-0) on Monday night in Ames, Iowa.
“Yeah, we’ve got to do a better job of playing simple basketball,” Otzelbarger said.
“I think offensively, a lot of times the ball gets stuck to a guy and we over-dribble him,” he said. “There have been games on the defensive end that we haven’t finished with two hands. We (get) a rebound, we knock it off someone’s foot or we have a careless turnover. Things that were just sloppy, They’re unnatural to how we play.”
Despite those shortcomings, Iowa State won 83-44 over Mississippi Valley State in its opener last Monday. Keyshawn Gilbert scored 17 points, Tammin Lipsey contributed 16, and Joshua Jefferson and Milan Momsilovic added 10 points apiece to lead the Cyclones, who shot just 23.8 percent (5 of 21) from beyond the arc.
This is an area Otzelburger will look to improve upon against Kansas City.
“I thought we looked good,” he said. “Curt (Jones) and Milan, especially, had really good looks. Overall, we shot the ball better than we did. But I didn’t think it was because we had good looks. No. It was because they were not good enough to fall for any reason.”
Kansas City will aim to challenge the Cyclones after starting their season with consecutive double-digit wins. The Roose had a 124-36 win over Kansas Christian in their most recent game on Friday night.
The 88-point margin of victory against an NCCAA Division II program is the largest in Kansas City’s program history. The previous record was a 73-point win over Bacone (111-38) on November 18, 2019.
“I felt like we put ourselves in a position to execute early and not have to worry about winning the game,” Roose coach Marvin Menzies said. “It’s something we didn’t do in our last game (a 91-68 win over Hannibal-LaGrange last Monday), so I felt like we took a step in the right direction.”
Anderson Copp scored 22 points to lead Kansas City on Friday. He had five rebounds and three steals.
Kashim Grady II will also try to stay hot for Russia. He scored 21 points on 7 of 11 shooting from the field, including 5 of 7 from beyond the arc against Kansas Christian.
Menzies said his team needs to stay focused for a tough test at Iowa State.
“The train is now out of the station,” he said. “So that’s how it goes. We’ll put this game behind us and put all our focus on the next possession.”
Menzies and Otzelbarger share a connection: both men were head coaches at UNLV. Menzies spent three seasons there (2016–19) and was immediately succeeded by Otzelberger (2019–21).
Monday will be the sixth meeting between Iowa State and Kansas City. The Cyclones lead the series 5–0.
–Field Level Media
