By Pat Harty

Sometimes, you just have salute the opponent and recognize a job well done.

That’s my reaction after watching the 17^th-ranked and undefeated Iowa State men’s basketball team have its ways against Iowa, winning 73-53 on Thursday at Hilton Coliseum.

It was Iowa State’s largest margin of the victory in the series.

You could harp on the fact that Iowa has lost three games in a row, and that the nation’s leading scorer, Keegan Murray, was held scoreless in the first half, and that Iowa barely put up a fight against the Cyclones.

But there’s plenty of time to do that as Iowa (7-3) enters finals week with eight days off before facing Utah State on Dec. 18 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

At this moment, though, you just have to recognize excellence, and that was Iowa State’s performance on defense in Thursday’s game.

Iowa entered the game averaging over 90 points per game, but it was struggle for Iowa to score just 50 points against the Cyclones.

First-year head coach T.J Otzelberger ,obviously, has convinced his players that the quickest way to rebuild the program is to be relentless and well-connected on defense, and that was Iowa State in Thursday’s game.

Iowa kept fighting and scrapping until the end, but it just couldn’t make shots, and that was mostly due to the defense it was up against.

The Iowa State players fed off the energy from the crowd, and energy is often the key to playing top-notch and aggressive defense.

Iowa State students were lined up outside Hilton Coliseum by the hundreds more than 2 1/2 before tip-off.

Hilton Magic was back in full force.

It was almost as if the disastrous 2020-21 Covid-19 shortened season in which the Cyclones finished 2-22 and winless in conference play never happened.

Otzelberger in a short time has worked wonders to have had the Cyclones 8-0 and ranked 17^th heading into Thursday’s game.

Iowa, on the other hand, entered the game coming off back-to-back losses to Purdue and Illinois by a combined 11 points, so there was even more than the usual motivation that comes from playing Iowa State.

Iowa needed a quality win other than Virginia, and the Cyclones represented quality at this stage of the young season.

It looked to be an intriguing matchup on paper,  but pretty much from the opening tip, Iowa State controlled the tempo, and did so by making the Iowa offense work incredibly hard for shots.

Iowa not only struggled to make shots, it struggled just to get shots off.

It was a drastic change from last season when Iowa, led by 2021 National Player of the Year Luka Garza, cruised to a 105-77 at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. The 6-foot-11 Garza scored 34 points in the game, including 25 in the second half.

Iowa had little post presence on offense in Thursday’s game, and its perimeter offense wasn’t any better.

It was just a complete mismatch on that end of the floor, and that’s obviously a concern for Iowa moving forward.

It was easy to get excited about Iowa’s success on offense when it started the season 6-0 against vastly inferior opponents.

But Iowa is now four games into a difficult five-game stretch and is 1-3 in those games.

Iowa State entered the game allowing less than 65 points per game, so this was a battle of wills and getting the opponent to play your game, and the Cyclones won easily.

Former Penn State guard Izaiah Brockington led Iowa State with 26 points, and his decision to play for Otzelberger is paying huge dividends for Brockington and for Iowa State.

If you didn’t know better, you would’ve thought that Brockington was the nation’s leading scorer with how he torched Iowa’s defense.

Keegan Murray finished with just nine points and nobody from Iowa did much on offense that was noteworthy.

It was stunning the way in which this new-look Iowa State team had its way against this new-look Iowa team.

Iowa was favored entering the game, and maybe that motivated Otzelberger’s players to be relentless on defense because they pounced on Iowa almost from the opening tip.

This was mismatch that nobody saw coming.