KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Iowa State star Ashley Joens isn't quite sure at what age she made her first basket. She does recall it was before she had learned to tie her shoes, so we're talking pre-K.
Saturday, though, she hit 3K -- as in 3,000 career points.
Joens became the 14th player in NCAA Division I women's basketball history to cross that threshold as her No. 3 seed Cyclones upset No. 2 seed Oklahoma 82-72 in the semifinals to advance to the Big 12 championship game. Iowa State will face No. 1 seed Texas, which defeated Oklahoma State in the semifinals, on Sunday for the championship (ESPN2, 2 p.m. ET).
The Cyclones are in the final for the seventh time in program history and are seeking their third league tournament title. The last came in 2001, when Joens was about to turn 1 year old. She wasn't making baskets then, but it wasn't too much longer before she did.
"My dad would know, although he might confuse me with one of my sisters," Joens said, smiling, of her first basket. "There's too many of us."
She is one of five basketball-playing Joens sisters: Courtney finished her Illinois career in 2020, Aubrey is a junior at Oklahoma, Kelsey was just named the Gatorade High School Player of the Year in Iowa and will follow Ashley to Iowa State next season, and Bailey is a fifth-grader expected to make her college debut in seven years.
Ashley Joens set Iowa State's career scoring mark last season, and the Cyclones advanced to the NCAA Sweet 16. She was expected to be a first-round WNBA draft pick but opted to return to Iowa State for a fifth year with the COVID-19 waiver. This season, she has also become Iowa State's leader in rebounds, field goals, 3-point field goals, free throws, double-doubles and games played.
She is the second Big 12 women's player to score 3,000 points; the other is former Baylor and current Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner, who is fourth on the NCAA all-time list with 3,283 points from 2009 to '13. The 6-foot-8 Griner dominated the paint; the 6-1 Joens scores from everywhere on court.
"It's been about finding new ways to score," Joens said. "This being my fifth year, [defenses] kind of know what I want to do and my tendencies. So finding different countermoves. Once you step on the court, it's all muscle memory. It's everything you've learned, everything you do in practice. And it goes back to when you're younger in your backyard just shooting on your own for fun."
Joens is one of the Big 12's best at drawing fouls; she drew eight Saturday against the Sooners as she finished with 22 points and eight rebounds. She leads the Big 12 in scoring this season (21.3 PPG), is third in rebounding (9.6 RPG) and was named the league's Player of the Year. She has won the Cheryl Miller Award the past two seasons as the nation's top small forward.
Joens' first basket of the second half -- a jump shot at the 8-minute, 14-second mark of the third quarter -- put her at 3,001 points. She now has 3,009 career points, with a career average of 19.3 PPG. In contrast to the fireworks of her game, Joens is a quiet person who shows little emotion while playing. She didn't even know she had reached 3,000 points Saturday, saying all she was concerned with was Iowa State winning.
"There are a lot of things Ashley has done, a lot of awards. She doesn't like to talk about it. It's very uncomfortable for her," Iowa State coach Bill Fennelly said. "She got the COVID year, yeah, but that doesn't take away from the fact that you are on a list of 14 people to ever do something. That's pretty impressive, and that list is some of the greatest players to ever play the game.
"For her to be one of those people says a lot about her and her work ethic, her ability to do those kinds of things. Very proud of her."
The most recent Division I women's player to hit the 3,000 mark was Ohio State's Kelsey Mitchell with 3,402 points from 2014 to '18; she is now with the Indiana Fever. The all-time leading scorer in NCAA women's history, which dates to 1981-82 when the NCAA began sponsoring women's basketball, is Washington's Kelsey Plum. Now with the WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces, Plum scored 3,527 points from 2013 to '17.
Plum and Mitchell both played 139 games; Saturday was Joens' 156th game. She lost out on Big 12 tournament and NCAA tournament games in 2020 when both events were cancelled by the pandemic.
Joens, who is from Iowa City, has at least two more games to add to her career total -- Sunday's Big 12 final and at least one NCAA tournament game.
"Obviously, there was always the dream of playing college basketball," she said. "But to be able to do it here at Iowa State and to be able to do it this successfully has been a huge blessing."