For the first time this offseason, Iowa State has an unqualified success on its hands.

How significant that success is, well, we won’t know until the Cyclones hit the floor next, but we do know they’ll do so with a little stronger roster than they had yesterday.

Jalen Coleman-Lands, a once-upon-a-time top-50 recruit and now a DePaul transfer, committed to joining the Cyclones to finish his career in the 2020-21 campaign.

As a graduate transfer, Coleman-Lands will be immediately eligible, something the Cyclones desperately needed after seeing three players transfer out of the program this spring and a fourth, Tyrese Haliburton, declare for the NBA draft as a potential top-five pick.

With four incoming freshman already signed last fall, the Cyclones needed immediate and veteran help if they wanted any chance of improving upon last year’s 12-20 season, but had spent the first two months of the offseason unable to garner a commitment from such a player.

ISU was close on a number of immediately-eligible difference-makers, but struck out each time. They landed Memphis transfer Tyler Harris, but he’ll need a waiver to play next season, an always tricky proposition.

So Coleman-Lands gives the Cyclones what they needed: Help.

He started his career at Illinois before heading to DePaul after his sophomore season. A surgery on his leg essentially cost him a season, and that’s why the NCAA granted him a sixth year of eligibility.

So Coleman-Lands has been around the college game for a long time. He turns 24 in July. He’ll give a young ISU squad much-needed experience. Plus, at 6-foot-4, he fills a position of need at the wing.

To bottom-line it, Coleman-Lands makes the Cyclones better.

How much better is the harder question to answer.

Coleman-Lands is a proven scorer at the high-major level, having averaged double figures for both the Illini and Blue Demons. He hasn’t always been particularly efficient in scoring those points, though.

And here is where Coleman-Lands becomes something of a mystery.

As a freshman with Illinois, he shot a blistering 42.2 percent on 206 3-point attempts. That’s a high success rate with a pretty large sample size. He regressed as a sophomore, but still shot a strong 36.5 percent from deep on 178 attempts.

After that, though, Coleman-Lands’ 3-point stroke seems to have abandoned him.

He shot 25 percent on 56 attempts in what became an injury-aborted 2018-19 season in which he played just nine games. It’s probably more than fair to attribute the poor shooting to the injury, but this past season, even further removed from that leg surgery, Coleman-Lands shot just 32.3 percent from deep on 192 shots.

He wasn’t particularly accurate nearer to the basket either, shooting a pedestrian 42.4 percent on 2s.

If those more recent numbers are the ones Coleman-Lands brings with him in his season in Ames, his impact on ISU’s winning will be blunted. The Cyclones have a desperate need for shooting and putting a wing on the floor who shoots in the low-30s from deep won’t satisfy that need. It’ll be a liability that needs to be limited - something we saw plenty of last season as ISU shot just 31.6 percent from deep as a team.

Now, if Coleman-Lands can edge back to the middle- or upper-30s, you’re talking about a player that will be much more valuable. If he can get back into the 40s of his freshman season, now you’re looking at a very impactful player.

Whichever version of Coleman-Lands ISU gets, though, he makes the Cyclones a better team today than they were yesterday. It’ll just be awhile before we find out to what degree.