The No. 2 team in men’s college basketball beat a top-10 team (a blueblood, at that) Wednesday night. They did it without a single minute played by a former top-100 high school player.
Watching the Iowa State Cyclones’ 74–57 win over the Kansas Jayhawks on Wednesday night, you’d never have guessed the roundabout paths taken to Ames, Iowa, by their top talents. Their leading scorer (Curtis Jones, who Kansas coach Bill Self said looked like a first-team All-American) didn’t have a single Division I or II offer out of high school and wasn’t even ranked a top-150 transfer the year he enrolled at Iowa State. Their frontcourt, which dominated Kansas star Hunter Dickinson, contains players whose careers have taken them to Washington State, Charlotte, Seattle and Saint Mary’s before matriculating in Ames. Their clutch shotmaker? An Ames High School legend largely overlooked by any of the major recruiting services.
“I think their evaluation [in] recruiting has been tremendous,” Self said postgame. “The pieces fit.”…