Wieben, ISU frustrate UNI
By DAN JOHNSON
Ames, Ia. - Talk about your tall tasks. That's what the Northern Iowa women's basketball team encountered in trying to defend Iowa State center Nicky Wieben on Tuesday.
The 6-foot-4 Wieben was 3 inches taller than Northern Iowa's tallest defender and she made the most of her height advantage in the second half as Iowa State pulled away to a 69-41 victory.
In the first 6minutes of the second half, Wieben posted up to score 11 of her 17 points as Iowa State stretched its 34-20 halftime lead to 48-26 before an announced crowd of 7,205 at Hilton Coliseum.
"We ran about the first five plays (of the half) to try to get the ball inside, trying to create some things going to the basket," Iowa State coach Bill Fennelly said. "That was obviously an advantage to us, to get the ball to the post."
Iowa State (8-1) allowed a season low in points and held the Panthers (4-5) to 30.8 percent shooting. The Cyclones finished with a 45-24 rebounding advantage, led by forward Amanda Nisleit's 10.
The victory, following wins against Iowa and Drake, gave Iowa State a sweep of the Big Four in-state games for the third consecutive year and the mythical state title.
Wieben has an even longer in-state winning streak. She was part of an Ankeny program that won four consecutive titles and compiled a 66-game winning streak against Iowa teams. Now at Iowa State, the junior center is 9-0 against the state's other Big Four teams.
"It's a good feeling," Wieben said. "It definitely puts a smile on my face. Hopefully, we can come back and do it again next year."
Wieben formed an effective inside-outside combination with point guard Alison Lacey, who scored 16 points.
"Once we started getting the ball inside and I scored a couple, we started running more plays to get the ball inside," Wieben said. "It's just the way the game went. Alison Lacey was able to hit some shots from outside. We were just looking for whoever was open."
Both teams came in as among the most prolific 3-point shooting teams in the country - Northern Iowa ranked third nationally with 8.8 3-pointers per game, Iowa State was 13th with 7.6 - but both were cold Tuesday.
The Panthers made just 3-of-13 3-pointers while Iowa State was 3-of-17, with all three made by Lacey. While Iowa State found inside scoring in the second half, Northern Iowa didn't.
"We have to be able to get more productivity out of our posts," Northern Iowa coach Tanya Warren said. "The '3' is too easy to guard. We have to be able to go inside-out to have balance. Right now, we don't have balance on the inside."
Freshman guard Jacqui Kalin carried Northern Iowa's scoring with 22 points, including the Panthers' first nine of the second half. However, Northern Iowa didn't have another player score until Kristin Iehl sank a basket with 11:15 to play.
"Our strong suit in the past games has been the 3-ball, so we knew the dribble penetration was going to be open this game," Kalin said. "Unfortunately, we couldn't find it as well as we could have. In terms of punching and kicking out, we didn't play as confidently as we should have."
Iowa State went ahead for good with a 14-2 run that gave it a 20-9 lead with 9:10 left the first half. The Cyclones held the Panthers to one basket in a 10:42 stretch. For the season, Iowa State is holding opponents to 49.7 points per game.
"We felt we would be a team that could defend, but I don't think there's any way we thought we could be holding teams the way we're doing it," Fennelly said. "To our kids' credit, they've adapted game to game. My assistant coaches have put together really good scouting reports and every game, we've guarded differently.
"We've defended as well as we have here in a long, long time."
Iowa State will be at Minnesota on Friday; Northern Iowa will be at Northern Illinois.
