The Iowa State basketball team has hit a bit of a rough patch as they have now lost three of their last four games. Tuesday night's loss against BYU was especially painful as the Cougars ended up getting the win in double overtime. The Cyclones did pull off a miraculous comeback to even get the game past regulation as they erased a 21-point deficit in the second half, but they couldn't get it done in OT. BYU won the game 88-85.

Iowa State did a good job getting back into the game, but head coach TJ Otzelberger was disappointed that it even got to that point.

“When we dug ourself a hole and were down 21, and it’s unacceptable on our end to allow our offensive disappointment to permeate our defense,” TJ Otzelberger said, according to an article from Deseret News. “We were careless in transition defense, we were not as locked in and we dug ourself a substantial hole. That is where, to me, the game was decided over that 15 or 16 minute stretch, where we put ourself in that tough spot. … We set the tone physically defensively right from the jump, and then they adjusted and drove the ball with more force. To their credit, that got them back into the game and helped them build that (winning) margin, and we weren’t as tough as we needed to be.”

Otzelberger was proud of the fight that his team showed when they went down big in the second half, but he wants Iowa State to be able play with that kind of intensity for a full 40 minutes.

“Credit to our guys and their fight for continuing to compete and get back into it, but at the same time, you can’t (slow down) against good teams,” Otzelberger added. “You’ve got to have more pride. It’s a lesson that we should have learned by now and should never have to learn again.”

One big issue for the Iowa State basketball team in the game was rebounding. BYU out-rebounded the Cyclones 52-24. It's hard to win games like that.

“There’s a part in defensive rebounding where if you want to win bad enough, you just find a way to get (rebounds), regardless of what’s going on,” Otzelberger said. “They had more fight on the glass to get the offensive rebound than we did to get the defensive rebound, unfortunately.”

Iowa State has a lot to figure out before the NCAA Tournament as they are in a slump. The Cyclones have some growing up to do, and they need to do it quickly.

“We’ve talked to our guys a lot about our best being in front of us, and you don’t just speak it into existence,” Otzelberger said. “You’ve got to earn it with hard work and with what you do in practice and then demand that consistency of those habits in the game and not be a team that plays great for stretches and plays awful for stretches. For a group that has a lot of older, experienced guys, we need to be a lot more mature as a team and play through those things instead of reacting to those things.”

The Iowa State basketball team has one more regular season contest before the postseason, and they need it to be a get right game. The Cyclones will be taking on Kansas State on the road on Saturday.