The Iowa State Athletics Department will honor and pay tribute to two of the greatest men’s basketball teams in school history when members of the 1999-2000 and 2000-01 teams return for a reunion and special halftime recognition on Jan. 4 against Baylor.
Behind outstanding players and coaching, the Cyclones shocked the world 25 years ago with the first of back-to-back Big 12 regular-season titles, establishing a standard of excellence future Iowa State teams strive to match.
It was the first conference title in men’s hoops in 55 years.
Heading into the 1999-2000 campaign, head coach Larry Eustachy’s second at the helm, the Cyclones were coming off consecutive 12-18 and 15-15 seasons. All-American Marcus Fizer was entering his third year at Iowa State and expectations were low.
In fact, one preseason publication picked the Cyclones dead last in the Big 12 Conference, noting, “They have not won with Fizer in his two years at ISU and no change is predicted for this season.”
What the prognosticators were unable to forecast was the improvement of Fizer and this team’s toughness and grit.
“We knew the talent that we had, from myself to Paul Shirley, Stevie Johnson and Martin Rancik, and down the line to guys like Mike Nurse, Jamaal Tinsley and Kantrail Horton,” Fizer, Iowa State’s first consensus All-American said. “We definitely accepted the role of being the unknown. We took losses very, very hard and they were very devastating because we knew for a fact, we were one of the most, if not the most talented team in the nation that year. We challenged each other every day in practice and made sure everyone was accountable for what was expected from the coaching staff.”
It worked.
Iowa State claimed its first conference regular-season title in 55 years and won the Big 12 Tournament Championship to earn a top-10 national ranking and a No. 2 seed at the NCAA Tournament.
Cyclone sharpshooter Mike Nurse, who made the second-most treys in a season with 99, summed up perfectly why this team was so potent.
“Most of the Big 12 played us where they had to help on Marcus. They had to sag because they didn’t want Marcus to beat them,” Nurse said. “This made me wide open. When the ball gets swung to me, and if I can’t make those shots, I shouldn’t be in the game. I was wide open for most of the year. You didn’t run many plays for Mike Nurse, but I was open. I could make those shots today I was getting in those games and I’m 46 years old. I was getting those shots because of Marcus and Jamaal. Everybody was like, we sag off Jamaal, he beats you anyway. You sag on Marcus, and then he does something different and scores. Alright, now we are going to start doubling him, and the ball get swung around, (Kantrail) Horton and Nurse are open. The shot goes up, you are doubling up Marcus and you can’t block out Stevie Johnson. All of sudden Stevie Johnson is all alone on the offensive boards. With that team it was pick your poison. By the end of the season, we had it figured out.”
A Cyclone struck in the NCAA Tournament, demolishing three teams (Central Connecticut State, Auburn, UCLA), including national-power UCLA (80-58) to advance to the Elite Eight for just the second time in school history. National newcomer of the year Jamaal Tinsley dazzled fans with his uncanny ball-handling and fell one rebound shy of a triple-double (14 points, 11 assists, 9 rebounds) in the win vs. the Bruins.
ISU’s magical season unfortunately ended when Iowa State and Michigan State, arguably the two best teams in the nation, faced each other in the NCAA Midwest Regional final a mere 40-minute drive from the Spartan campus in Auburn Hills, Mich.
Eventual national champion Michigan State prevailed, 75-64, in a tough, hard-fought game.
Fizer was named the Big 12 Player of the Year and was the runner-up national player of the year by the AP, and Eustachy was the national coach of the year, as the Cyclones broke the school record for wins with 32.
Fizer had another season of eligibility but elected to forgo his final year, earning the fourth overall pick in the 2000 NBA Draft.
With Fizer gone, nobody expected the Cyclones to repeat as Big 12 champs in 2000-01. However, with Tinsley, Shirley, Horton and Rancik back, the team had the same goals.
“I got to give it up to our coaching staff,” Tinsley said. “Playing for a guy like Coach Eustachy, who demands so much out of you, was just a blessing. No matter if you’re the 12th-man or the best player, he would ride everybody the same. That’s what I respected about him as a man and as a coach, because not once did he treat anybody differently on the court. He always treated everybody the same. We knew we had a chance to repeat, even though we lost one of our key players in Marcus. We knew that we were tough-minded. And being a tough-minded team, we knew we had an advantage over teams that were weak. We took that into consideration and went out there and gave it our all.”
ISU continued its Big 12 dominance, racing out to a 19-3 overall mark, a 7-2 league record and a top-15 national ranking when it traveled to No. 5 Kansas in a key February matchup.
Prior to the game, Tinsley is remembered for one of the most famous quotes in Cyclone lore when he called famed Allen Fieldhouse as “just another gym.”
“Well, where I was brought up (New York City) playing basketball, if you got scared, you got hurt,” Tinsley said. “Guys played for their lives on the courts. Games went to 15 and would sometimes last about two hours. Now, in college, basketball was fun. Basketball is fun no matter what but going into a college atmosphere like Kansas and hearing all of the riff-raff, it was like a piece of cake compared to the streets of Brooklyn. No offense to Kansas, but it was my background that had a lot to do with my statement.”
ISU won 79-77 and defeated Kansas two weeks later in Hilton Coliseum to take a stranglehold on the Big 12 race.
The Cyclones locked up their second-straight Big 12 regular-season championship in an 86-73 victory over Nebraska on Senior Day in Hilton Coliseum, cutting down the nets in front of a sold-out crowd.
The win culminated ISU’s second consecutive perfect home record with Tinsley and Horton never losing a game in Hilton Coliseum with a 34-0 mark.
“Well, that’s home (Hilton Coliseum), you always want to protect your home,” said Tinsley, who was named Big 12 Player of the Year and first team All-American in 2001. “You never want to let games get away from you at home. You always want to protect the cookie jar. We were fortunate enough to win a lot of games at home, and that gave us a good opportunity to go out and win a lot of games on the road, too.”
Please join us Jan. 4 as we recognize the incredible accomplishments of these amazing Cyclones.
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