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- Maye Toure scored 24 points, leading Utah to a 75-67 win over Iowa State.
- Kennady McQueen contributed crucial shots, despite suffering a knee injury late in the game.
- Utah snapped Iowa State's 12-game home winning streak with this victory.
AMES, Iowa — Maye Toure was out to prove something.
Against one of the best bigs in the Big 12 in Audi Crooks, Toure opened up Utah's Sunday night meeting on the road against Iowa State with the team's first 8 points, and didn't stop there.
No shot was bigger, though, than when she hit a 3-pointer with 2:38 left in a tight game to give the visiting Utes a 6-point lead, and then poked away a ball from Crooks with less than 30 seconds left to give Utah the ball and an eventual 75-67 win at Hilton Coliseum.
The Utah (12-2, 3-0 Big 12) win snapped a 12 game home winning streak for Iowa State (10-6, 1-2 Big 12).
Toure finished with a team-high 24 points — including going 4-of-6 from behind the 3-point line — nine rebounds, four assists, three blocks and two steals in arguably her best performance of the season.
And though Toure was instrumental in Utah's road win, it was Kennady McQueen that provided some clutch moments down the stretch. The Utah native hit a 3-pointer with just over four minutes left to break a 58-58 tie in a game that had nine lead changes and four ties.
The shot gave Utah what it needed to start to pull away down the stretch after a back-and-forth affair. Following the McQueen 3-pointer, Toure secured a block on Crooks on the other end, and McQueen then hit another triple in response to give the Utes a 6-point lead.
Iowa State answered back with a 3-pointer of their own before Toure's 3-pointer to keep the 6-point advantage.
But The Cyclones refused to quit and hit another 3-pointer minutes later to make it a 3-point game before Ines Vieira drained a deep 3-pointer with 26.9 seconds left to all but seal the victory.
In the final seconds of the game, McQueen went up to catch a pass as Iowa State's Aili Tanke pulled her down on top of her left knee. Instantly, McQueen could be heard screaming in pain on the TV broadcast as she grabbed her left knee and rolled around on the ground before being attended to by medical personnel.
McQueen was helped off the court without putting weight on her left leg as the refs reviewed the play and assessed an intentional foul, sending Gianna Kneepkens to the free-throw line where she drained both shots to give the Utes a 7-point lead it would never relinquish.
Minutes earlier in the fourth quarter, Kneepkens suffered an injury of her own that took her out of the game. After hitting a jumper at the shot clock buzzer, Kneepkens came down awkwardly and hurt her knee.
But fortunately for Kneepkens and Utah, she was able to return to the game minutes later after being attended to off the court.
McQueen finished with 15 points, including going 3-of-3 from behind the arc, and six rebounds in the win. No other Utah player finished in double figures as Iowa State's defense limited much of what Utah hoped to do.
Still, the Utes made 13 3-pointers and had 18 assists on its 26 made field goals.
Crooks led the Cyclones with a game-high 19 points and eight rebounds in the loss, while Emily Ryan added 18 points, six assists and five rebounds.
Utah opened up the road tilt with a quick tempo that kept Iowa State's defense on its heels early, while hitting on the team's first seven shots to take an early 18-10 result that eventually ballooned to an 11-point lead.
Iowa State made a comeback, though, and turned it into a back-and-forth affair for the duration of the game before Utah pulled away late. Utah had several opportunities to build upon a lead but couldn't put together a consistent effort.
The real struggle was the team going 4-of-15 from the field in the second quarter to give the Cyclones room for a comeback.
