Peterson: Iowa State women's basketball's Emily Ryan deserves spot on Hilton rafters

AMES – Wait a minute before telling me I’m full of it. Hear me out. I’m about to propose something you maybe hadn’t thought of, and here we go:

Iowa State women’s basketball player Emily Ryan deserves a spot on Hilton Coliseum’s rafters. Right up there beside past stars Tonya Burns, Megan Taylor, Jayme Olson and Angie Welle. Her statistics maybe don’t scream All-World, but sometimes you have to look beyond the box score to understand a person’s value to the team.

That’s Emily Ryan, a 5-foot-11 senior guard who will succeed in life, regardless of how her post-basketball world is defined.

Just watch her. Her teammates look up to her. Em, as they call her, is the glue, the calming force and the unabridged definition of loyal.

When players from last season’s Big 12 Conference tournament title team were defecting left and right, Ryan stood solid. By golly, she was going to finish what she started.

“I couldn’t imagine not being a Cyclone,” Ryan told me on Dec. 17 after playing in her first game this season following a recovery from a health-related issue. "Having an opportunity to play with this team is something I've been looking forward to for a while."

And Iowa State couldn’t imagine not having her.

I attended Wednesday night’s game against No. 24 West Virginia, thinking that I’d someday be writing this column. I went to watch her specifically – her pregame routine, the way her teammates interact with her, and how coach Bill Fennelly’s freshman-loaded team looks up to her.

I left Hilton, formulating thoughts in my head as everyone battled our snowy roads. Once arriving at my destination, I grabbed a Diet Coke and started stringing together words. My personal Emily Ryan to Hilton’s Rafters campaign could wait no longer.

More: Iowa State women's basketball overcomes double-digit deficit to beat West Virginia

What she did in helping rally one of the nation’s youngest basketball teams to a 74-64 victory was off the charts. Holy buckets, after trailing by 19 points in the middle of the third quarter against a Top 25 team.

Could Hilton Magic do its thing a second night in a row – very similar to the atmosphere during the men’s 57-53 victory against second-ranked Houston a night earlier?

You betcha.

In just more than 25 minutes, Ryan scored 13 points and grabbed seven rebounds. She made all five of her free-throw attempts, including four in the game's final 3 minutes. Could the Cyclones have won this big game without her?

No.

In the last 3½ minutes, Ryan (in this order) made a layup, grabbed a defensive rebound, drew a foul, made two free throws, snared another defensive rebound, drew another foul and made two more free throws.

"Honestly, it sounds far out there, but once we got (the deficit) to 10, I felt really good about the momentum we had and how lively Hilton was getting,” Ryan said from the press conference podium after the game. “That’s kind of when I looked up and said, 'All right, we’ve got this. We’ve got momentum. We’re doing the right things.'

“Once we got down to 10, that’s when we started rolling.”

I’m not going out on a snow-covered limb when writing that, to date, this has been Fennelly’s best, at least recent best, coaching job. And that's partly because Ryan didn’t follow teammates out the door last spring. Ryan held this program together at a time the outside world wondered what the heck was going on.

“She’s kind of become the point-guard coach,” Fennelly once said. “You can tell when she’s playing, there’s a calming effect that she provides. She understands what we want to do, what we need to do. She puts other people in a better position.”

Remember those words:

She puts other people in a better position.

That’s why Ryan's jersey needs to be hoisted someday at Hilton Coliseum.

Iowa State columnist Randy Peterson is in his 51st year writing sports for the Des Moines Register. Reach him at rpeterson@dmreg.com, on X @RandyPete, and at DesMoinesRegister.com/CyclonesTexts

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Peterson: Emily Ryan deserves a Hilton rafters spot among other greats