AMES, Iowa (KCRG) – Iowa State women’s basketball enters this season ranked 14th in the country.
The ranking comes from the Cyclones returning their top five scorers from 2024-25. However, the team was bounced in the round of 64 last season.
At media day Thursday, coach Bill Fennelly emphasized his excitement, and with all the veterans, the team feels like they’ve learned and are ready to live up to their expectations.
“At the beginning of the year, we were not nearly as good as people thought. At the end of the year, we were not nearly as bad as people thought,” Fennelly said. “We did play in the NCAA Tournament. We did win 23 games with a team full of sophomores and one senior. This year, we have basically all juniors, and one senior again. I do think there’s a greater understanding.”
Junior center, Audi Crooks said the team learned valuable lessons from last season’s challenges.
“We learned that we’re a really resilient team. The losses kind of helped us later in the year,” Crooks said. “Playing against the South Carolina’s and UConn’s teach us a lot of valuable lessons. We lost by quite a bit, but that helped kind of expose some of our weaknesses. We feel like we really worked on those in the offseason.”
Iowa State’s first regular season game is November 3 versus St. Thomas.
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