The Iowa State women’s basketball team has stunned everyone this season. They’ve had a historic start with 14 wins to begin the 2025-26 season. But the Cinderella run is over, all thanks to Baylor, who just gave a blueprint to stop Audi Crooks and the Cyclones.

“I think that it was really, really intense,” said Iowa State star Audi Crooks in the postgame press conference. “I don’t think we were at our best tonight.” And it’s not hard to understand why she said that. With a 72-70 loss against Baylor, the Cyclones fell to 14-1 on the season.

Well, a large part in handing over the defeat was played by Darianna Littlepage Buggs. As her teammate puts it, better, “Yeah, I think she's the glue. Without her, we don't win…She's a beast on the board. She gets every rebound, offensively, defensively. She battles. She really battles for us. And she sets the tone for us defensively, right?” shared Tahliah Scott. 

“Offensively, she can get hers. She spaces. She understands the game really well at a really high level. And so having her on a team, especially a veteran like that, that's all the difference in the world for us.” 

And she’s right. Buggs tied her career high of 20 rebounds, while adding 13 points for Baylor. And that’s not it. Her score also marks the 7th double-double of the season, and the 37th double-double of her career. Her defensive presence, no doubt, added to the team’s chances of winning.

However, it was the head coach’s key strategy that made all the difference. 

How The Bears Actually Won?

The Bears were aware of the challenge ahead of their game versus the Cyclones. Even Baylor’s HC joked that they would need something supernatural to defend the NCAA’s leading scorer, Audi Crooks. And she made some sense, too, as defending a player averaging 29.4 points per game with a historic 72.5% shooting rate isn’t easy.

Especially since Crooks got three 40-point outings so far, so dominance was somewhat expected. But the Bears came up with a solution. The team defended Crooks with two players, one ahead and one behind. They didn’t go one-on-one. This left Williams open for shots but denied passes in the paint to Crooks.

“It obviously made it hard to get Audi the ball,” said Iowa State coach Bill Fennelly. And clearly, this strategy worked as Crooks was slowed down. 

The Bears hit four of five shots and went on an 11-2 run in the second quarter. It was enough for them to take a 35-32 lead. While Iowa State found ways to score and went on a 6-0 run, the lead didn’t last long.

Baylor scored the final six points of the second quarter and headed into halftime with a 41-29 lead. Then the back-and-forth continued until 3:18 was left, and Iowa State trailed by eight. They used an 8-0 run to tie the game.

“Everybody knew where we were looking, and it was Audi, obviously,” Williams said. “She’s our best player.” But Audi wasn’t really able to help as much as expected.

Still, she had 26 points with 10 rebounds. But of course, it wasn’t enough as Baylor walked away with the win.

Written by

Yashika Dutta

Edited by

Joyita Das