After two close games — a 6-5 win on Friday and a 6-4 loss on Saturday — Iowa State (19-24, 4-8 Big 12) lost 15-5 against Texas Tech (29-21, 3-9) on Sunday, April 21, 2013.

With the loss coming after four pitching changes and two five-run innings, ISU coach Stacy Gemeinhardt-Cesler was not pleased with her team’s performance.

“We’ve got to throw strikes, we can’t walk people like that,” Gemeinhardt-Cesler said. “Once we actually do throw strikes, we have to make the play behind them. I mean, that is just ridiculous.”

After four innings of struggling offensively as well, Erica Miller helped her team score three runs in the fifth to keep the Cyclones in the game momentarily. With her 45th RBI of the season, Miller set a new ISU record.

“It’s really nice, but it’s a team record,” Miller said. “It helps me a lot when people get on base and all I have to do is hit a single to get them in. I just try to put the ball in play as much as I can no matter what the situation is.”

During that three-run inning, Gemeinhardt-Cesler said she saw a difference in her team’s batting, also noting they did this in Saturday’s seventh inning.

“They just seemed to be freed up a little bit more,” Gemeinhardt-Cesler said. “They did a better job where they hit good pitches and obviously there were good chunks yesterday and today where we didn’t.”

Another record set on Sunday was the team’s steals record, with 71 in one season. Freshman, Brittany Gomez, stole two bases on Sunday to seal the record for the team.

“I just like doing what I can for the program and everything,” Gomez said. “It’s not just me, it’s everybody in general that has that many steals. It just happened to be me who was the one who broke it.”

Although the records — individual and team — were broken, the coaches and the players could not ignore the feeling of loss once the game was over.

“If we play like we played today, then we’re not going to win a lot of games,” Gemeinhardt-Cesler said. “We’ve been playing well at home and we have a great crowd and [the way we played Sunday was] embarrassing. We can do a lot better.”