Randy Peterson
|
December 04, 2025
Thankfully, we have some very good winter sports to deflect our attention to what has become one of the nastiest football offseasons imaginable. Iowa State supporters, for example, have Joshua Jefferson and Audi Crooks, two of the nation’s best players starring for two of the best teams in college basketball.
For example:
** On the same day a picture showed up on social media (maybe real, maybe fake) of Lane Kiffin’s clothes on the curb outside his former Ole Miss office . . .
Crooks was in one of those can’t miss grooves basketball players sometimes go through, scoring a head-spinning 47 points during a 106-95 victory against respectable Indiana – and also on that day, Cyclones wrestlers beat Iowa for the first time since 2004.
** And around the time another headline showed up about former LSU coach Brian Kelly complaining about his previous employer making it “nearly impossible” to shop around for a new job . . .
T.J. Otzelberger’s Iowa State men’s basketball team was putting a wrap on the St. John’s-Creighton-Syracuse sweep at the Players Era Festival in Las Vegas.
Thank goodness for our annual change of seasons, when fall and winter sports merge, and in this case, when our indoor sports offer relief for nauseating narratives around big-business college football.
** BYU offers Kalani Sitake and his program a boatload of money, in lieu of the respected veteran coach replacing James Franklin at Penn State?
Cyclones men’s basketball prepares to play a huge game Saturday at top-ranked Purdue.
How huge?
A week after the Las Vegas Sweep, Iowa State has another opportunity for more of the national respect that Otzelberger’s 8-0 team right now deserves. Follow Wednesday’s 132-68 win against Alcorn State – during which the Cyclones made 22 of 30 three-point attempts -- with a win against the Boilermakers at home, and not only move up on everyone’s Top Ten, but also send another very strong message to the NCAA Tournament’s selection committee.
Too early to be referencing that?
Maybe, but a win Saturday against Matt Painter’s 8-0 team certainly gets everyone’s attention.
The Cyclones already have one Quad-1 win – against St. John’s. Adding another before facing the likes of Kansas (twice), Baylor (twice) – and after hosting Houston and playing at TCU, BYU and Arizona during the annual taxing Big 12 season – a major non-conference victory would fit nicely on the ol’ resume.
Furthermore, Otzelberger and his team can do something just one other Iowa State team has done.
Otzelberger has coached the Iowa State men’s basketball team to two Sweet 16s, four NCAA Tournaments, and a Big 12 Conference tournament title. He’s done this during just four quick seasons following that rock bottom 2-22 disaster.
Over this short period of time, he’s been the best thing to hit Cyclones men’s basketball since Tyrese (Haliburton), Georges Niang, Matt Thomas, Naz Mitrou-Long and Monte Morris.
But . . .
No Iowa State basketball team, men or women, have beaten a top-ranked team on the road – not to be confused with neutral site.
That can change, during the 11 a.m., game at Mackey Arena, where the Boilermakers rarely lose.
Otzelberger-coached Iowa State teams have beaten two top-ranked opponents -- Houston in the 2024 Big 12 tournament championship game in the Cyclones’ home-away-from-home Kansas City, and North Carolina in the 2022 Phil Knight Invitational in Portland, Oregon. Saturday is his first opportunity to do it in a true road-game environment.
Furthermore, just two of Iowa State’s Big Five sports coaches have ever beaten a top-rated opponent on the road -- Dr. Harold Nichols, whose wrestling team won at Minnesota in 1971, and Cael Sanderson, whose wrestlers won at Minnesota 36 seasons later.
Cyclones football is 0-10 against Associated Press top-ranked teams regardless of game site. Ditto the women’s basketball team. Volleyball coach Christy Johnson-Lynch has two wins at home against No. 1s – Nebraska in 2012 and Texas in 2022.
An upset Saturday at Purdue would get national attention, proving again that the college sports world doesn’t necessarily begin and end with the holy grail that is football.
It sometimes just seems like it.
(Columnist Randy Peterson, a past Iowa Sportswriter of the Year winner, can be reached at randypete4846@gmail.com or at any Okoboji-area beverage/food establishment between the hours of open and close.)