Women's Basketball: Cyclones are looking for more ‘Municipal Magic’

AMES, Iowa — Goosebumps dot Angie Welle’s skin when she thinks about playing at Municipal Auditorium.

The building in downtown Kansas City, Mo., is where Welle’s Iowa State basketball teams won back-to-back Big 12 tournament titles in 2000 and 2001.

So many Cyclone fans filtered into Municipal Auditorium that it was dubbed “Hilton Coliseum South.” Cardinal and gold was everywhere, it seemed, from hotels and restaurants to the old arena that opened in 1936.

Welle, ISU’s all-time leading scorer and rebounder, who is now a sixth-grade teacher in Fargo, N.D., said she remembers the pep band waiting outside as she and her teammates loaded the bus. Fans cheered as they entered the hotel lobby.

“Everything about it was just amazing,” Welle said.

Kansas City and “that little civic center” known as Municipal, she said, hold some of the best memories of her playing career, which included NCAA Tournament runs to the Elite Eight and the Sweet 16.

In 2003, the league tournament started rotating between Kansas City, Dallas and Oklahoma City.

K.C. brings a flood of good memories to Bill Fennelly, the Cyclones’ 15th-year coach. Fennelly is especially fond of 2000, when his team beat Texas in the championship game, and then ISU’s men beat Oklahoma for the crown.

“The center of the basketball world was our university,” Fennelly said. “I’ve never been through anything more exciting than that as a coach.”

Denae Stuckey, a senior guard for the Cyclones, would have been 11 years old at the time. She grew up in Kansas City, Kan., and faintly remembers going to concerts and a car show at Municipal Auditorium as a “little, little, little girl.”

But Stuckey’s favorite Municipal memory came two years ago in a Big 12 tournament quarterfinal. The No. 8-seeded Cyclones, after trailing by five points with less than 30 seconds remaining in overtime, upended No. 1 seed Kansas State 66-65.

“It was just crazy how all that excitement came so quickly after being down so much with 30 seconds left,” Stuckey said.

This season’s Cyclones are seeking some more Municipal Magic.

Picked seventh in the league’s preseason coaches’ poll, No. 14-ranked ISU (23-6, 11-5 Big 12) secured the No. 2 seed and will play Thursday’s Oklahoma State-Kansas winner on Friday at 5 p.m. at Municipal Auditorium.

The Cyclones haven’t been seeded this high since 2000, when the championship team that included Welle was seeded No. 1.

Still, postseason success has become routine.

ISU has collected more wins (21) in the league tournament than any other team in the Big 12’s 13-year history, though Oklahoma owns a conference-best four tournament titles.

Fennelly is hoping for more postseason success later this week, though he is sure of at least one thing: Cyclone fans, who comprised an average crowd of 7,235 per home game during the regular season, will flock to Kansas City.

Making Municipal Auditorium a home away from Hilton has become tradition.

“I’m sure the local merchants of Kansas City are rooting for us,” Fennelly said. “We help business.”

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