Lello was in Des Moines with her sister, Ebba, and other Badger teammates the other day for a game against Drake.

Ebba, a 6-3 starting forward, scored six points and had three rebounds while playing 27 minutes in Wisconsin’s 59-49 loss to the Bulldogs. Lello, a transfer from Duke who plays center, came off the bench to total four points and four rebounds while playing 25 minutes.

The Gebisa sisters are quite a story. They’re of Ethiopian descent, and their hometown is West Lafayette, Ind., where their parents are professors at Purdue. Both are outstanding students. Lello is a junior majoring in industrial engineering, Ebba is a sophomore in business.

A part of Lello’s personal life that’s interesting around here is that she’s the girlfriend of Shane Power, the 6-5 former Iowa State basketball player who abruptly quit Coach Larry Eustachy’s program last spring.

"Shane is from Crown Point, Ind., which is a little over an hour from West Lafayette," Lello told me after her game against Drake at the Knapp Center. "I’ve known him since my senior year in high school.

"He’s attending Mississippi State now, and I think he’s happy. He just got home for Christmas break, so I’ll be seeing him soon."

Lello said transferring to Wisconsin "was definitely an option" for Power after his days at Iowa State ended, but evidently there were no basketball scholarships available there for him or anyone else.

Obviously, Power keeps up with what’s going on at Iowa State now. Jake Sullivan, the Cyclones’ standout guard, has said that he and Power touch base with one another with regular telephone visits.

"I didn’t get to watch the Iowa State-Iowa game on TV Friday night because we were practicing," Lello said, "but I know Shane saw the game on TV."

Power started all 31 of the Cyclones’ games last season, averaged a team-high 37.5 minutes per game, averaged 13.6 points, led the team in steals and was second in assists.

But something obviously wasn’t right.

Sullivan, who scored a game-high 25 points in Iowa State’s 73-69 victory over Iowa, said Power "wasn’t happy" as a Cyclone.

"We were very close friends," Sullivan said. "This is a program that’s very demanding, and it’s not for everyone. It wasn’t for him."

Eustachy said, "I think we’re a better team when guys leave who don’t want to buy into this program. So I look at (Power’s departure) as a positive."

Power is sitting out this season to satisfy NCAA transfer regulations, and will have two years of eligibility remaining at Mississippi State.

When I asked Coach Lisa Stone if the Bulldogs were ready for Saturday’s 2:05 p.m. game against Iowa at the Knapp Center, she said, "I look forward to every game. I put on our board that every game we play is the biggest game of the year.

"The Iowa game is no different than the Wisconsin game, the Dayton game or the Tulane game."

In other words, it’s big.

It’s big because it’s Iowa. It’s big because it’s against Lisa Bluder, who preceded Stone as Drake’s coach.

The Bulldogs have won the last four games in the series—two of them against Bluder’s teams. Stone’s team rolled past Iowa, 73-58, here two years ago and won in overtime, 75-72, last season in Iowa City.

Drake (5-3) shot only 20.8 percent in the first half and 31.4 percent for the game against Wisconsin, but Stone told a huge turnout today at the Fastbreak Club at Christopher’s that the game was "a big one for us—huge for confidence, huge for the Knapp Center.

"It was a great crowd (3,269) and, hopefully, we’ll have an even bigger crowd this Saturday (for the Iowa game). Wisconsin was really a big team. They made (6-3 center) Carla Bennett look like a point guard."

Stone said she’s "very excited about our team. I believe in our team."

"They all came over to our house before the game," she said. "My daughter, Allison, who is 10, is the oldest grandchild. All the other little kids were running around the house."

Everything’s OK so far.

Then….

"My 66-year-old father decides to go outside and teach the kids how to pogo stick," Stone said. "But he flew off the pogo stick and into the garage and tore his rotator cuff. He’s doing fine now after seeing doctors and members of our training staff, but he was trying to hide from me so I wouldn’t see him and get worried.

"My brother called 911 to say, ‘I have a 66-year-old man here who just fell off a pogo stick.’

"Anyway, my father has a sling on his arm, but he’s doing fine and we won the game."

"Because the Iowa Hawkeye men are playing in the Orange Bowl, we don’t want to have a conflict of interest," she told those at the Fastbreak luncheon. "Come to (our) game first, then go home and watch the Orange Bowl."

Sola shot 74.1 percent—going 20 for 27—from the field and 65 percent (13 of 20) on free throws to average 26.5 points in victories over Grinnell (162-110) and Western Illinois (72-62) last week. He also averaged 7.5 rebounds and four assists in the games.

Despite playing only 21 minutes against Grinnell, Sola scored a career-high 26 points. He had 17 points against Western Illinois.

Iowa State forward Jackson Vroman, who averaged 11.6 points and 11.3 rebounds in three games, was named the Big 12 Conference rookie of the week.

Vroman was strong down the stretch in the Cyclones’ 73-69 victory at Iowa that ended their 11-game road losing streak. He made the game-winning basket with 20 seconds to play.