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ISU hosts Texas Tech to tip off Big 12

T-R GRAPHIC

AMES — The key to getting conference play off on the right foot is to not overlook the Big 12 opener with bigger games looming in the near future. The Iowa State and Texas Tech men’s basketball teams will be in similar situations when they begin conference play against each other Friday inside Hilton Coliseum.

Both squads enter Big 12 play with less than stellar non-conference results. The Red Raiders (11-1) are a 67-65 loss to Auburn away from beginning the conference slate with an unblemished record, making their résumé look a little better.

Tech’s best non-conference win was an 85-84 victory against Rice, which is ranked 113th according to kenpom.com, and the Red Raiders only have one other win so far this season against a team in the top 200.

Iowa State’s non-conference isn’t anything to write home about, but the Cyclones (8-3) do have a win against 28th-ranked Miami, and two losses by a combined three points to two top-20 teams in Gonzaga and Cincinnati. And the Cyclones are coming off back-to-back underwhelming performances which included an unexpected loss to the Iowa Hawkeyes, and a game in which then one-win Drake hung around with the Cyclones for 35 minutes of the game before ISU pulled away for a 17-point win.

Following Friday’s opener, Texas Tech in the next week will entertain No. 11 (Associated Press) West Virginia, and travel to No. 3 Kansas. ISU will face fourth-ranked Baylor on the road Wednesday.

The Cyclones and Red Raiders come into Friday’s matchup with similar offenses. ISU averaged 84.3 points a game through its first 11 games this season. Tech comes in scoring 82 points a contest. Like the Cyclone scoring, Tech’s offense doesn’t feature just one or two scorers. The Red Raiders top 5 point producers are averaging double digits per game, and no one averages more than 13.4 a game.

Keenan Evans leads the Red Raiders with the 13.4 points a game, and Anthony Livingston is right behind him with 13 a contest. Despite only playing seven games so far this season, Aaron Ross is third on the team in scoring with 12.3 points a game, and Zach Smith averages the same. Justin Gray rounds out the Red Raider leading five, averaging an even 10 points a game.

After some off games in which he struggled to find his shot, Nazareth Mitrou-Long is coming off a performance where he scored a career-high 37 points against Drake, followed up with 19 against Mississippi Valley State and leads the Cyclones at 15.3 points a game. Monte Morris (14.6), Deonte Burton (12.5) and Matt Thomas (12.1) are the other Cyclones averaging double figures.

Defensively, the Red Raiders have two players who rank in the top 10 of the Big 12 in blocks. Smith has 19 this season, and Gray has added 16 as the duo has accounted for 35 of the team’s 48 rejections. As a team, Iowa State has 33 blocks this season, and Burton is responsible for 12 of them. Burton is third in the conference in rebounds, pulling down eight a game, and Smith leads Tech, collecting 7.5 boards a game, tied for fourth in the Big 12.

The Red Raiders and Cyclones tip-off at 5 p.m. Friday, with ESPNNews broadcasting the game.

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