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Following the leader
Lacey calling the shots for surging Cyclones
By Ben Gouldsmith
Date Posted: 2010-02-09
A basketball feels natural in Alison Lacey’s hands. A snowball, not so much.
Lacey is Iowa State’s senior point guard and undisputed leader. She’s also from Canberra, Australia, a place not known for its freezing temperatures and heavy snowfall.
But it just so happens that during Lacey’s most successful season on the hardwood, she’s had to navigate a historically snowy and frigid winter in Ames.
“I don’t think it’s very normal to have to live in this weather,” Lacey said. “How cold it gets, I will never be able to accept it or get used to it. It always shocks me.”
This is Lacey’s fifth winter in Iowa. Her first year here, she was a foreign exchange student at Ballard in Huxley as a high school senior. The last four, she has been an ISU student and basketball player.
Weather woes aside, Lacey’s 2009-10 hoops season is on track to becoming one of the best of any player in ISU history.
“She has taken a team that is extremely young and has put them on her back,” Kansas State coach Deb Patterson said.
Indeed, Lacey is one of only two starters, along with junior guard Kelsey Bolte, back from the Cyclones’ Elite Eight team of a season ago. Five of nine players in this season’s playing rotation are newcomers.
Yet the Cyclones (18-4 overall, 6-3 Big 12 Conference) are ranked No. 20 in the nation. And despite being picked by coaches to finish seventh in the rugged Big 12, a league in which seven teams are ranked, the Cyclones are in a three-way tie for second place with less than a month left in the regular season.
How to explain this?
“It starts with Alison Lacey,” said ISU coach Bill Fennelly, who called his 6-foot star the best player in the league Sunday after she directed the Cyclones’ 65-39 beating of Missouri.
Lacey is averaging 17.6 points, 6.5 assists and 5.5 rebounds per game. She leads the league in assist-to-turnover ratio (3.20) and free-throw percentage (88.8 percent).
“Since her freshman year, I’ve wished she would graduate,” Missouri coach Cindy Stein said Sunday after Lacey scored 18 points to go with seven assists, six rebounds and a steal.
Lacey has scored in double figures in 21 of 22 games despite usually being guarded by the opponent’s best defender.
During ISU’s 63-48 win over Texas Tech last Wednesday, the Red Raiders routinely swarmed Lacey with two and sometimes three players every time she touched the ball. But it didn’t matter. Lacey got 13 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists.
“She makes everyone around her better,” Texas Tech coach Kristy Curry said of Lacey. “She has great skill, but her will is always stronger than her skill.”
Which brings us to her 32-point outburst against Colorado at Coors Events Center in Boulder on Jan. 16. With her team wobbling in the second half, Lacey’s instincts took over.
During a 7-minute stretch, Lacey scored 18 straight points for ISU. She scored on 3-pointers a foot or more behind the men’s line; she scored on drives to the basket; she scored on midrange jumpers.
The Cyclones won, mostly because Lacey, whose nickname is Aus, wouldn’t let them lose.
“I don’t tell Aus what to do a whole lot anymore,” Fennelly said. “She usually tells me what to do at this point.”
That formula has been working quite well.
Lacey has directed the Cyclones to wins in six of their last seven games. She’s almost always on the court, averaging 37.6 minutes of playing time an outing during that span.
“Coach and I talked about it, and he said for us to be successful, you need to be one of the better players in the league,” Lacey said.
The point guard is holding up her end of the deal. In turn, she has the Cyclones primed for their fourth straight berth in the NCAA Tournament.
Before her team’s nationally televised game against Missouri on Super Bowl Sunday, Lacey playfully chest-bumped teammates during pre-game warmups in a nearly empty Mizzou Arena.
Then the Cyclones tamed the Tigers. The 26-point rout was Missouri’s worst loss of the season.
After a quick on-court television interview and a postgame press conference, Lacey joined her teammates in boarding a charter bus back to Ames, just in time for another snowstorm.
Ben Gouldsmith can be reached at (515) 663-6931 or bgouldsmith@amestrib.com.
Lacey calling the shots for surging Cyclones
By Ben Gouldsmith
Date Posted: 2010-02-09
Iowa State's Alison Lacey is the Big 12 Conference leader in assist-to-turnover ratio (3.20) and free-throw percentage (88.8 percent). She's also the league's sixth-leading scorer with 17.6 points per game.
Tribune file photo by Nirmalendu Majumdar
Tribune file photo by Nirmalendu Majumdar
A basketball feels natural in Alison Lacey’s hands. A snowball, not so much.
Lacey is Iowa State’s senior point guard and undisputed leader. She’s also from Canberra, Australia, a place not known for its freezing temperatures and heavy snowfall.
But it just so happens that during Lacey’s most successful season on the hardwood, she’s had to navigate a historically snowy and frigid winter in Ames.
“I don’t think it’s very normal to have to live in this weather,” Lacey said. “How cold it gets, I will never be able to accept it or get used to it. It always shocks me.”
This is Lacey’s fifth winter in Iowa. Her first year here, she was a foreign exchange student at Ballard in Huxley as a high school senior. The last four, she has been an ISU student and basketball player.
Weather woes aside, Lacey’s 2009-10 hoops season is on track to becoming one of the best of any player in ISU history.
“She has taken a team that is extremely young and has put them on her back,” Kansas State coach Deb Patterson said.
Indeed, Lacey is one of only two starters, along with junior guard Kelsey Bolte, back from the Cyclones’ Elite Eight team of a season ago. Five of nine players in this season’s playing rotation are newcomers.
Yet the Cyclones (18-4 overall, 6-3 Big 12 Conference) are ranked No. 20 in the nation. And despite being picked by coaches to finish seventh in the rugged Big 12, a league in which seven teams are ranked, the Cyclones are in a three-way tie for second place with less than a month left in the regular season.
How to explain this?
“It starts with Alison Lacey,” said ISU coach Bill Fennelly, who called his 6-foot star the best player in the league Sunday after she directed the Cyclones’ 65-39 beating of Missouri.
Lacey is averaging 17.6 points, 6.5 assists and 5.5 rebounds per game. She leads the league in assist-to-turnover ratio (3.20) and free-throw percentage (88.8 percent).
“Since her freshman year, I’ve wished she would graduate,” Missouri coach Cindy Stein said Sunday after Lacey scored 18 points to go with seven assists, six rebounds and a steal.
Lacey has scored in double figures in 21 of 22 games despite usually being guarded by the opponent’s best defender.
During ISU’s 63-48 win over Texas Tech last Wednesday, the Red Raiders routinely swarmed Lacey with two and sometimes three players every time she touched the ball. But it didn’t matter. Lacey got 13 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists.
“She makes everyone around her better,” Texas Tech coach Kristy Curry said of Lacey. “She has great skill, but her will is always stronger than her skill.”
Which brings us to her 32-point outburst against Colorado at Coors Events Center in Boulder on Jan. 16. With her team wobbling in the second half, Lacey’s instincts took over.
During a 7-minute stretch, Lacey scored 18 straight points for ISU. She scored on 3-pointers a foot or more behind the men’s line; she scored on drives to the basket; she scored on midrange jumpers.
The Cyclones won, mostly because Lacey, whose nickname is Aus, wouldn’t let them lose.
“I don’t tell Aus what to do a whole lot anymore,” Fennelly said. “She usually tells me what to do at this point.”
That formula has been working quite well.
Lacey has directed the Cyclones to wins in six of their last seven games. She’s almost always on the court, averaging 37.6 minutes of playing time an outing during that span.
“Coach and I talked about it, and he said for us to be successful, you need to be one of the better players in the league,” Lacey said.
The point guard is holding up her end of the deal. In turn, she has the Cyclones primed for their fourth straight berth in the NCAA Tournament.
Before her team’s nationally televised game against Missouri on Super Bowl Sunday, Lacey playfully chest-bumped teammates during pre-game warmups in a nearly empty Mizzou Arena.
Then the Cyclones tamed the Tigers. The 26-point rout was Missouri’s worst loss of the season.
After a quick on-court television interview and a postgame press conference, Lacey joined her teammates in boarding a charter bus back to Ames, just in time for another snowstorm.
Ben Gouldsmith can be reached at (515) 663-6931 or bgouldsmith@amestrib.com.
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