Staiger’s bombs helps Cyclones roll past Drake

DES MOINES (ISU)— Lucca Staiger tallied a career-high 32 points and established a new Iowa State single-game standard for 3-pointers in a game with 10, as the Cyclones cruised to a 90-70 victory at Drake Tuesday night at the Knapp Center.

The win improves ISU’s record to 3-0 and ends a three-game losing streak to the Bulldogs. Staiger, who finished the game 10-of-16 from 3-point range, helped the Cyclones drill 14 for the game, one shy of the school mark.

Staiger, who also broke the Knapp Center record for treys in a game, beat the old ISU mark of nine set by Dedric Willoughby against Kansas in 1997.

“Lucca can shoot,” ISU head coach Greg McDermott said. “He made it look really easy today. We have a lot more weapons than we did last year, and it makes it a lot easier for guys on the perimeter like Lucaa and Scott (Christopherson) to get open.”

Thanks to Staiger’s hot shooting from the beginning, the Cyclones raced out to a 17-7 lead with 14:17 remaining in the first half. Similar to last year’s game, Staiger made his first four 3-point attempts to score 12 of ISU’s first 17 points in the game.

Drake battled back with six straight points by Josh Young to cut the gap to 17-13 at the 12:58 mark. A 12-3 run by ISU improved its lead to 36-22 with 6:20 left before intermission.

Craig Brackins was scoreless through the first 12 minutes of the game, but tallied 11 points the rest of the first half to help ISU take a commanding 51-32 lead at the break.

Chistopherson also gave ISU a huge boost from of the bench, scoring 13 first-half points. Christopherson was 3-of-4 from 3-point range to help the Cyclones make 8-of-14 from downtown in the opening period.

It was the first time the Cyclones scored 50 points in a half since tallying 50 against SIU-Edwardsville on Jan. 3, 2009.

The Bulldogs weren’t going to let down, quickly cutting the Cyclone lead to 54-41 in the early minutes of the second half after Adam Templeton buried a long trey. But Staiger got hot again, making ISU’s first nine points of the second half on three bombs to put ISU back up, 60-41 with 15:43 left in the game.