2025 Kansas State Women’s Basketball: Game 22 vs Iowa State

It’s been a rough week and a half for the Kansas State Wildcats.

Back on Jan 19th, in the midst of winning their 14th-straight game, the MittieCats lost the services of All-American center Ayoka Lee to a foot injury — one that will sideline her until at least near the end of the regular season. The Wildcats then got most of the next week off to prepare for the loss, but couldn’t overcome a litany of self-inflicted mistakes enroute to an embarrassing 63-53 loss in Boulder to the same Colorado team that knocked the Wildcats out of the NCAA Tournament last season. Not exactly the redemptive performance that was expected.

And now the Wildcats (19-2, 7-1 Big 12) must face a tough, if flawed, Iowa State team that features Audi Crooks — a now-sophomore center that gave Ayoka Lee loads of problems last season.

It’s not all bad news for the Cats. The Cyclones are not having the season they expected after ending last season with a late surge of 6-straight wins (including beating then-#15 K-State in Bramlage) that pushed them into the Big 12 Tournament title game, and then a second-day trip in the NCAA Tournament — where they fell in overtime to 2-seed Stanford.

This season, the Cyclones have played an extremely tough schedule, and three of their four non-conference losses are to Top 25 teams (South Carolina, Iowa, and UConn). Their Big 12 losses are all to very good teams — OSU, Utah (before they lost Kennady McQueen to injury), and West Virginia. But they have yet to play K-State, TCU, or Baylor, who are still the biggest dogs in the conference this season.

So K-State and Iowa State square off tonight. Even with Ayoka Lee to go one-on-one with Audi Crooks this was going to be a tough one. But now Kennedy Taylor, Eliza Maupin, and Imani Lester are going to have to work extra hard down low. And they are going to need Serena Sundell, Temira Poindexter, and others to step up outside. And there’s the added distraction of the Cyclones having two Kansans — Claflin’s Emily Ryan and Derby’s Addy Brown — who both start, and who have both managed to bring loud cheering groups with them to Bramlage.

K-State needs to win tonight if they want to keep pace ahead of the pack in the Big 12. But Iowa State wants to get back into that conversation themselves. This is going to be a tough game. Let’s hope the home crowd can give the Wildcats enough boost to push them over the top.

We’ve got a 7:30pm CT tipoff for the game this evening from Bramlage Coliseum, and you can catch the action on ESPN (yeah, the big one) with Eric Frede (play-by-play) and Christy Thomaskutty (analyst) on the call.

If you can’t get to ESPN, or can’t access the stream, the game can be heard across portions of the 28-station K-State Sports Network with Brian Smoller (play-by-play) and Kristin Waller (analyst) calling the action. The game will also be available online at K-Statesports.com and via the Varsity Network app. Live stats are also available at k-statesports.com, and social media updates (@KStateWBB) will also be a part of the coverage.

Go Cats!