No. 5 Iowa State faces Kansas City, goals to beat ‘sloppy’ effort

No. 5 Iowa State won its season opener by 39 points, but that doesn’t mean coach T.J. Otzelberger is fully satisfied.

The group’s mentality is to always find areas to improve, and that will be the case as Iowa State (1-0) tips off against Kansas City (2-0) on Monday night in Ames, Iowa.

“Yeah, we have to do a better job of playing simple basketball,” Otzelberger said.

“I think, offensively, there are times the ball got stuck with one guy and we over-dribbled it,” he said. “There are plays on the defensive end that we didn’t finish with two hands. We (would get) a rebound, we dribble it off of someone’s foot or we have a careless turnover. Things that were just sloppy that are uncharacteristic of how we play.”

Despite those imperfections, Iowa State cruised to an 83-44 win over Mississippi Valley State in its opener last Monday. Keshon Gilbert scored 17 points, Tamin Lipsey contributed 16, and Joshua Jefferson and Milan Momcilovic added 10 apiece to lead the Cyclones, who shot only 23.8 percent (5 of 21) from beyond the arc.

That’s an area Otzelberger will look to improve upon against Kansas City.

“I thought we had good looks,” he said. “Curt (Jones) and Milan, specifically, had really good looks. Overall, we want to shoot the ball better than we did. But I didn’t think it was because we didn’t have good looks. It was because they weren’t falling for whatever reason.”

Kansas City will aim to challenge the Cyclones after opening its season with back-to-back, double-digit victories. The Roos cruised to a 124-36 win over Kansas Christian in their most recent game Friday night.

The 88-point margin of victory against the NCCAA Division II program is the biggest in program history for Kansas City. The previous record was a 73-point win over Bacone (111-38) on Nov. 18, 2019.

“I felt like we put ourselves in position early to just execute and not have to worry about winning the game, so to speak,” Roos coach Marvin Menzies said. “That’s something we didn’t do in our last game (91-68 win over Hannibal-LaGrange last Monday), so I felt like we took a step in the right direction.”

Anderson Kopp scored 22 points to lead Kansas City on Friday. He added five rebounds and three steals.

Kasheem Grady II also will look to stay hot for the Roos. He scored 21 points on 7-of-11 shooting from the field, including 5 of 7 from beyond the arc, against Kansas Christian.

Menzies said his team needs to be focused for a tough test at Iowa State.

“The train is out of the station now,” he said. “So it’s rolling. We’ll put this game behind us and put all our focus into the next possession.”

Menzies and Otzelberger share a connection: Both men were head coaches at UNLV. Menzies spent three seasons there (2016-19) and was immediately succeeded by Otzelberger (2019-21).

Monday will mark the sixth meeting between Iowa State and Kansas City. The Cyclones are 5-0 in the series.

–Field Level Media