No. 11 Iowa State women stunned by Cincinnati, 71-63, Wednesday on the road

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was written in Iowa

Iowa State women’s basketball coach Bill Fennelly has a meaningful quote attributed to John Wooden hanging in his office wall.

It roughly reads: “Athletics doesn’t build character. It reveals it.”

Fennelly highlighted those words on the Cyclone Radio Network after his No. 11 Cyclones’ shocking 71-63 loss Wednesday night at Cincinnati.

ISU (14-2, 2-2 Big 12) lost its second straight game and star guard/forward Addy Brown didn’t play because of a back injury. Starting guard Arianna Jackson appeared to sustain a major injury late in the loss to the Bearcats (6-10, 1-3), as well, which made that quote particularly apropos.

“We’re gonna find out what our team’s made of,” Fennelly said. “I have great faith that they’ll figure something out and move forward. We’re gonna have to block out a lot of the outside noise that’s coming. That’s fine. I don’t really care about that one bit.”

Fennelly does care about the sudden downturn of team, however, which led just four minutes and 30 seconds against a Cincinnati team that hadn’t beaten a ranked foe since 2011.

Audi Crooks led the Cyclones with 23 points and 10 rebounds, but shot just 10-for-21 from the field and 3-for-9 from the free throw line. ISU shot 36 percent overall, 19 percent from the 3-point line, and 55 percent on free throws.

“Are we disappointed by this? Absolutely,” Crooks said. “Did we expect this? No, I don’t think anybody did. But it just shows the competitiveness of this league and the competitiveness of women’s basketball as a whole. So we’ve just gotta be on our A-game at all times, and we’ll be back in the lab, for sure.”

The Bearcats snapped a four-game skid than included losses by 28 points to Oklahoma State and 27 points to Kansas State. They shot 49 percent from the field, 44.4 percent from beyond the arc, and 71 percent from the free throw line to notch the stunning upset despite losing 25 turnovers.

“They made winning plays and we did not,” Fennelly said. “And that’s certainly a credit to them and something that, obviously, we have a lot of work to do with Addy Brown out and, obviously, (Jackson’s) out.”

Jada Williams added 13 points and a game-high seven assists for ISU, but also lost four turnovers.

“We’ve just gotta play better,” Williams said. “As a point guard, I know I have to contribute a lot more to this team. The turnovers were unacceptable on my part.”

The Cyclones will try to get back on track against a tough West Virginia team (13-3, 3-1) at 2 p.m. Sunday at Hilton Coliseum.

“We’ll see,” Fennelly said. “There’s still a lot of basketball yet to be played, but this is certainly disappointing — and it’s my responsibility. I thought we were ready to play. I really, really did. … Just couldn’t get it done today.”

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