The No. 5-seed Iowa State Cyclones showed no mercy to the No. 12-seed Arizona State Sun Devils in the second round of the 2026 edition of the Big 12 Tournament.
On Wednesday, Iowa basketball had a walk in the park against the Sun Devils, with the Cyclones coming away with a 91-42 victory at the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City. That came before Arizona State officially fired head coach Bobby Hurley.
If that scoring margin feels like it should be talked about within a historical context, it is because it's exactly of that nature.
The 49-point beatdown the Cyclones handed the Sun Devils was the third biggest margin in any game in a conference tournament since the turn of the millennium.
Only the Louisville Cardinals' 61-point drubbing of the Rutgers Scarlet Knights in the 2014 ACC Tournament and the Pepperdine Waves' 59-point win of the Pacific Tigers in the 2024 WCC Tournament are the bigger annihilations by a team in a conference tourney game this century than Iowa State basketball's demolition of Hurley's squad.
For Arizona State, the defeat nearly tied the program's worst loss in terms of scoring margin since 1956.
“This 49-point loss is Arizona State's largest since a 50-point loss to Texas Tech on Feb. 1, 1956,” ESPN Insights shared via a social media post on X, formerly Twitter.
An 18-0 run by Iowa State in the first half virtually knocked out the Sun Devils, as the Cyclones reached halftime with a 45-16 lead. The onslaught of T. J. Otzelberger's team did not stop there, as the Cyclones went off for 46 points in the final 20 minutes of the contest, while holding Arizona State to just 26 points in the same frame.
The March Madness-bound Iowa State moves on to the quarterfinal round of the Big 12 Tournament and will next face the Texas Tech Red Raiders on Thursday.
