Joens hits 3K points, puts Iowa St. in Big 12 final

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Iowa State star Ashley Joens is not fairly positive at what age she made her first basket. She does recollect it was earlier than she had discovered to tie her footwear, so we’re speaking pre-Okay.

Saturday, although, she hit 3K — as in 3,000 profession factors.

Joens grew to become the 14th participant in NCAA Division I ladies’s basketball historical past to cross that threshold as her No. 3 seed Cyclones upset No. 2 seed Oklahoma 82-72 within the semifinals to advance to the Large 12 championship recreation. Iowa State will face No. 1 seed Texas, which defeated Oklahoma State within the semifinals, on Sunday for the championship (ESPN2, 2 p.m. ET).

The Cyclones are within the ultimate for the seventh time in program historical past and are in search of their third league event title. The final got here in 2001, when Joens was about to show 1 yr previous. She wasn’t making baskets then, nevertheless it wasn’t an excessive amount of longer earlier than she did.

“My dad would know, though he would possibly confuse me with certainly one of my sisters,” Joens mentioned, smiling, of her first basket. “There’s too many people.”

She is certainly one of 5 basketball-playing Joens sisters: Courtney completed her Illinois profession in 2020, Aubrey is a junior at Oklahoma, Kelsey was simply named the Gatorade Excessive Faculty Participant of the Yr in Iowa and can comply with Ashley to Iowa State subsequent season, and Bailey is a fifth-grader anticipated to make her faculty debut in seven years.

Ashley Joens set Iowa State’s profession scoring mark final season, and the Cyclones superior to the NCAA Candy 16. She was anticipated to be a first-round WNBA draft choose however opted to return to Iowa State for a fifth yr with the COVID-19 waiver. This season, she has additionally change into Iowa State’s chief in rebounds, area objectives, 3-point area objectives, free throws, double-doubles and video games performed.

She is the second Large 12 ladies’s participant to attain 3,000 factors; the opposite is former Baylor and present Phoenix Mercury middle Brittney Griner, who’s fourth on the NCAA all-time record with 3,283 factors from 2009 to ’13. The 6-foot-8 Griner dominated the paint; the 6-1 Joens scores from all over the place on courtroom.

“It has been about discovering new methods to attain,” Joens mentioned. “This being my fifth yr, [defenses] form of know what I need to do and my tendencies. So discovering completely different countermoves. When you step on the courtroom, it is all muscle reminiscence. It is all the pieces you’ve got discovered, all the pieces you do in follow. And it goes again to whenever you’re youthful in your yard simply taking pictures by yourself for enjoyable.”

Joens is without doubt one of the Large 12’s finest at drawing fouls; she drew eight Saturday towards the Sooners as she completed with 22 factors and eight rebounds. She leads the Large 12 in scoring this season (21.3 PPG), is third in rebounding (9.6 RPG) and was named the league’s Participant of the Yr. She has gained the Cheryl Miller Award the previous two seasons because the nation’s prime small ahead.

Joens’ first basket of the second half — a leap shot on the 8-minute, 14-second mark of the third quarter — put her at 3,001 factors. She now has 3,009 profession factors, with a profession common of 19.3 PPG. In distinction to the fireworks of her recreation, Joens is a quiet one that exhibits little emotion whereas taking part in. She did not even know she had reached 3,000 factors Saturday, saying all she was involved with was Iowa State successful.

“There are a variety of issues Ashley has finished, a variety of awards. She does not like to speak about it. It is very uncomfortable for her,” Iowa State coach Invoice Fennelly mentioned. “She acquired the COVID yr, yeah, however that does not take away from the truth that you’re on a listing of 14 individuals to ever do one thing. That is fairly spectacular, and that record is among the best gamers to ever play the sport.

“For her to be a kind of individuals says so much about her and her work ethic, her means to do these sorts of issues. Very happy with her.”

The latest Division I ladies’s participant to hit the three,000 mark was Ohio State’s Kelsey Mitchell with 3,402 factors from 2014 to ’18; she is now with the Indiana Fever. The all-time main scorer in NCAA ladies’s historical past, which dates to 1981-82 when the NCAA started sponsoring ladies’s basketball, is Washington’s Kelsey Plum. Now with the WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces, Plum scored 3,527 factors from 2013 to ’17.

Plum and Mitchell each performed 139 video games; Saturday was Joens’ 156th recreation. She misplaced out on Large 12 event and NCAA event video games in 2020 when each occasions had been cancelled by the pandemic.

Joens, who’s from Iowa Metropolis, has no less than two extra video games so as to add to her profession whole — Sunday’s Large 12 ultimate and no less than one NCAA event recreation.

“Clearly, there was all the time the dream of taking part in faculty basketball,” she mentioned. “However to have the ability to do it right here at Iowa State and to have the ability to do it this efficiently has been an enormous blessing.”