Iowa State Basketball: 2021-22 season preview for the Cyclones
There may be no team in all of College Basketball more pleased to say goodbye to 2020 and the season it brought than Iowa State Basketball.
While not expecting to take the Big 12 by storm exactly, the Cyclones found themselves with an abysmal 2-22 record, including a 0-18 record in conference play. The first winless season in the Big 12 since 2104. Their worst season in 45 years, with the lowest win total since the 1920s, things truly could not be worse in Ames.
Such failure required change. At the end of the nightmare season, Head Coach of six seasons Steve Prohm was fired, making way for a new era of Cyclone Basketball. TJ Otzelberger of UNLV was brought in to right the ship. Otzelberger is a former Assistant Head Coach at ISU and spent close to nine years with the program across two stints before departing to become a Head Coach of his own.
Bringing in someone with a history in the department hopes to accelerate the turnaround for the program. Otzelberger has connections with more successful teams in ISU history, and he makes the fan base happy. For whatever that’s worth.
That being said, Iowa State is not in a good place. There is severe roster turnover with nine players either transferring or graduating. Meaning Otzelberger has had to essentially build from scratch to get his program to a place to play games for the upcoming season. He’s also had to essentially re-recruit his class of incoming freshmen and those young pieces that remained, which has impressive talent.
Iowa State needed an upgrade. And they got it. They got a coach who hangs his hat on recruiting and has effectively done so, and they have a team that, while lacks chemistry at the moment, has the talent to disrupt the status quo, perhaps. The Cyclones are in a position where things can’t get any worse, so even minor victories are celebrated, and failures will slide off them.
Otzelberger has set himself up for a competitive first season in Ames, Iowa, and that starts with the high-end talent he’s recruited. Let take a look at those starters.