The Frogs were picked to finish last in the Big 12 before the season. Well after one game they are tied for first.

TCU needed late-game heroics from RJ Nembhard to force overtime, but once in the extra period the Frogs were able to hang on and top Iowa Iowa State 81-79.

“We got a good win. It’s good to be 1-0 in Big 12 play," TCU coach Jamie Dixon said. "But believe. That’s what I told them after the game. I don’t know that we played our best game, but simply put they believed. They believed."

Nembhard had a career day, scoring 31 points on 10-of-15 shooting, including six-of-eight from the three-point line. His biggest shot came with 1.7 seconds left as he banked in a game-tying three-pointer from well beyond the line.

“I thought it was going in, I didn’t think it was going to hit the glass. I was kind of surprised when it hit the glass," Nembhard said. "My teammates have the utmost confidence in me, coaching staff has the utmost confidence in me, so it’s easy to play when you have that."

That was an excellent way to get redemption as he missed a free throw that would have tied the game with 10 seconds left.

“I was pretty sick when I missed the free throw, I thought I let us down in that aspect," Nembhard said. "But the basketball gods were with me and it came right back around."

Once in overtime, it was Nembhard again who hit a three to put the Frogs up four and they never looked back.

Desmond Bane played much of the game in foul trouble and missed much of the second half rally after drawing a fourth foul on what could have easily been called a charge. Even though he had to sit and watch, he never lost faith in his team.

"I saw it on the replay and I thought I was outside the arc, but coach told me that he thought I was on the line," Bane said. "But I was still confident in our team -- like RJ said, we’ve had multiple different lineups out there and I knew that we were going to do exactly what we did -- win the game. I wasn’t worried about it."

Bane scored 16 points and had eight rebounds. He hit four three-pointers of his own as TCU hit 14 of its 27 shots from beyond the arc.

"We’ve said all along that we’ve felt we were a better shooting team than what we’ve shot and you’ve seen our numbers increase and improve and our percentages go up," Dixon said. "We believe that. We’re working on it hard."

This is the fifth straight win for TCU against Iowa State, the longest string of success against one team since joining the Big 12. The next most consecutive wins is three against Baylor. But Dixon think it's just the Frogs making clutch shots as the two teams play a similar style.

"I don’t know that we planned to bank in one, but we pay similar styles offensively. Defensively, we’re different in what we do," Dixon said. "It is what it is. We made some shots in some games. I don’t think we had ever beaten them before we got here, but it’s a step in the right direction."

TCU (10-3, 1-0 in the Big 12) will try to stay undefeated early in the conference slate when it travels to Kansas State (7-6, 0-1) at 8 p.m. Tuesday. TCU, Iowa State and Kansas State were all picked to finish seventh or worse in the Big 12 preseason poll. The Big 12 usually gets six or seven teams into the NCAA tournament so these first two games against lower half of the conference opponents are especially huge.