89-84 in an overtime thriller<\/a>\u00a0to begin the session at the Enterprise Center.<\/p>\nThe Cyclones already were dealing with a groin injury that limited point guard Tamin Lipsey in the Big 12 Tournament. Now, their depth will be tested even more without Jefferson, who was second on the team in scoring and their leading rebounder.<\/p>\n
Freshman Killyan Toure had career-highs of 25 points and 11 rebounds against the Tigers. Milan Momcilovic had 17 points and 6-foot-10 forward Blake Buchanan, who becomes crucial should Jefferson be unavailable, had 11 points, seven rebounds and eight assists.<\/p>\n
The Cyclones\u2019 big first-half run turned a 9-7 lead into a 32-7 blowout in a span of about five minutes. They pushed the advantage to 55-29 by halftime, and the biggest cheer the rest of the way came when Jefferson joined his team on the bench after the break.<\/p>\n
Aaron Nkrumah had 21 points to lead Tennessee State, which former Duke star Nolan Smith led to the Ohio Valley regular-season and tourney titles in his first season as their head coach. Antoine Lorick III added 20 points and Travis Harper II had 13.<\/p>\n
Flagrant foul<\/p>\n
After watching Jefferson get hurt, Iowa State coach T.J. Otzelberger was predictably incensed when Tennessee State forward Kavien Jones grabbed Dominykas Pleta around the neck and dragged the Cyclones\u2019 forward to the ground. The Tigers\u2019 freshman received a Flagrant 2 foul, resulting in an immediate ejection, but apologized to Pleta on the way to the locker room.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Iowa State has lost all three of its games against Kentucky, the last two in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. The first of those was a 106-98 loss in 1992 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the most recent an 87-71 loss in 2012 in Louisville, Kentucky; the Wildcats went on to beat Kansas for the national championship that season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(AP Photo Credit\/Ali Overstreet) ST. LOUIS (AP) \u2014 Iowa State star Joshua Jefferson left in the first half…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,8434,590,270932,85,273754],"class_list":["post-553927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-iowa-state","tag-nba","tag-ncaa-tournament-2026","tag-sports","tag-tennessee-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Iowa-St-vs-TSU-NCAA-tournament.jpg\")
<\/p>\n