Jadda Buckley knows not to take any Big 12 game lightly. She watched last season as the Iowa State women’s basketball team swept a top-10 Texas squad, but lost twice to a Kansas team that finished second-to-last in the league.
Hindsight is 20/20, of course, but those two losses to the Jayhawks cost ISU a chance to finish third outright in the conference a year ago.
Buckley knows this well, and has expressed the same mantra to her teammates each week: every game matters.
“This is what we signed up for,” Buckley said. “Big games. Conference play.