Back on November 7, 2022, reserve forward Izzi Zingaro took the floor in the fourth quarter at the Hilton Coliseum, and helped her eighth-ranked Iowa State team close out a long-decided 87-54 victory with five points.
Three years later, according to On3’s Talia Goodman, the 6-4 Canadian will be suiting up for the Cyclones’ opponent that day: Cleveland State.
In all, Zingaro spent three seasons in Ames. Though she never played more than the 6.9 minutes per game she earned in 2022-23 (her final year at ISU), she still contributed to plenty of team highlights, led by the 2023 Big 12 championship – a title that seemed somewhat unlikely after star post Stephanie Soares was lost to injury midway through the schedule. However, Zingaro and Morgan Kane did well with expanded roles, buffering the setback enough to hang a conference banner. The Cyclones also made the NCAA Tournament in both 2021 and 2022.
Individually, Zingaro tended to put together big efforts when the opportunities arose, including 11 points and six rebounds against Kansas on January 21, 2023 and a nine-point, five-rebound line versus Texas Tech later that season.
However, things weren’t going quite as well behind the scenes, and she stepped away from basketball just before the 2023-24 season to focus on her well-being, while completing her business management degree at ISU.
“It’s hard to tell what’s going on to someone from the outside,” Zingaro said in a feature posted to GoGriz.com this past fall. “It got to the point where I was at a long-time low and my mental health was not so great. The only way I was going to get better was to separate myself from the environment. I thought I’d push through another season, but that’s not what I needed.
“When you’re playing a sport that you’ve loved your whole life but you’re not having fun anymore, you know something’s wrong.”
Another former Iowa State player, Maggie Espenmiller-McGraw, had similarly fallen out of love with the game around the same time, but found an enjoyable conclusion to her playing career at Montana. She figured that Big Sky country could offer the same benefit for one of her old teammates and reached out.
What resulted was a restorative season for Zingaro with the Grizzlies in 2024-25, one that fell just shy of a conference title after a one-point defeat to archrival Montana State in the championship game.
She served early notice of her comeback with a career-best 25 points and eight rebounds against North Dakota State on December 4th, then followed up with a string of impressive games in early February. Zingaro’s field goal percentage (57.6) ranked 58th nationally, and she also knocked down three-quarters of her free throws, leading to 7.6 points per game.
Nevertheless, she entered the transfer portal on March 28th, a move that resulted in connecting with another Iowa State graduate, Chris Kielsmeier.
With Cleveland State, she’ll likely join another recent graduate transfer, Laurel Rockwood, in the Vikings’ post rotation – a surprisingly-quick recovery from only a few days ago, when CSU didn’t have anyone to occupy the middle of the floor.
