Women’s basketball: CU Buffs routed at Iowa State

AMES, Iowa – Coming into Saturday, just a half game separated the Colorado and Iowa State women’s basketball teams in the Big 12 standings.

On the court, it wasn’t even close.

Iowa State got off to a sizzling start and blasted the Buffaloes, 86-56, on Saturday afternoon at Hilton Coliseum. It was the worst loss in more than five years for CU (16-7, 7-5), which had a four-game winning streak snapped.

“I thought we played hard. Everybody that took the floor tonight in a black uniform played really hard,” CU head coach JR Payne said. “I think just as a group we needed to play smarter and execute the game plan a little bit better. But Iowa State is such a great team that if you’re not 100% where you’re supposed to be, they’re gonna make you pay. So they definitely outplayed us tonight.”

CU had no answer for Cyclones star Audi Crooks, who leads the Big 12 in scoring. The dominant sophomore center finished with 33 points and 12 rebounds, hitting 15 of 20 shots.

“She’s just a rare combination of size and skill and mobility,” Payne said. “If she can get in the paint, we call it the kill zone, then she’s very tough to stop.”

While Crooks took care of business inside, her teammates went 11-for-23 from 3-point range.

Playing in front of 10,081 fans on the road, the Buffs hung with Iowa State early, as a Kennedy Sanders bucket pulled them within 12-9 with 5 minutes, 45 seconds left in the first quarter.

Over the next 10 minutes, however, CU was outscored 22-3, including a 17-0 run by the Cyclones to close the first quarter. In those 10 minutes, CU went 1-for-14 from the floor.

“Open threes to one of the better shooting teams in the conference or in the country,” Payne said of how the game got away from the Buffs.

CU’s deficit reached 24 midway through the third before Johanna Teder (11 points on the day) sparked a rally. An 11-1 Buffs run pulled them within 56-42 late in the third, but ISU answered again. The Cyclones scored the last five points of the quarter and the first eight of the fourth to bump the lead to 69-42. Iowa State led by as many as 32.

Playing against her former team, Nyamer Diew led CU with 15 points, while Teder had her highest point total since Nov. 17.

As a team, however, CU never got going offensively, shooting 33.9% (21-of-62). The Buffs limited their turnovers to 14, but Iowa State turned those into 20 points.

CU played a third consecutive game without leading scorer Frida Formann (stress fracture). The Buffs’ top two active scorers, Jade Masogayo and Lior Garzon, finished with a combined five points. Shut down by Crooks, Masogayo was scoreless on 0-for-3 shooting. Garzon had five points on 2-of-7 shooting.