Two days removed from the ISU volleyball team’s historic home victory against top-ranked Nebraska, the No. 19 Cyclones (6-4, 0-0 Big 12) have already moved on.

Conference play begins Saturday with Baylor at home and the team has another potential milestone in mind.

Coach Christy Johnson-Lynch has done a lot of things in her seven-plus years at Iowa State: She’s turned the team into a perennial NCAA tournament team, she’s beaten Nebraska both on the road and at home and even taken the Cyclones to the Elite Eight twice.

This season, the team’s goal heading into conference play happens to be something she hasn’t done.

“We want to win a championship; we haven’t done that yet,” Johnson-Lynch said. “We want to win a Big 12 championship.”

Last season, the Cyclones began the conference season with a 9-2 record. This year, Johnson-Lynch elected to give her team some tougher competition and as a result enter Big 12 play Saturday at 6-4. 

Through the first 10 matches of the season, the team has showed both moments of greatness and struggled. Johnson-Lynch said she realizes, especially this year, that every match is going to count.

“We are capable of winning a Big 12 championship, but we’ve got to improve in some areas and again I think this year more than a couple other past years, I feel like even our matches against some of the team’s that are struggling in the Big 12 could be a dogfight,” Johnson-Lynch said.

Big-win hangover

Iowa State kicks off its conference season with Baylor on Saturday following one of the biggest wins in program history. But beating the previously No. 1 Cornhuskers could pose a detrimental effect as well.

Coming off a big win, the big looming question is whether the Cyclones will have what some call a “big-win hangover.” Even though the win against Nebraska was the first ever at Hilton Coliseum, freshman Mackenzie Bigbee said the team is already moving on.

“It was a great win and everything, but I think a huge factor is that the whole week before we had been working our tails off at practice,” Bigbee said. “We should just continue to have that mindset, keep working hard every day so we can keep improving [and] don’t take a day off before we don’t want to fall behind.”

After the Baylor matchup, Iowa State will hit the road for the first time in more than three weeks. As Johnson-Lynch previously noted, matches against teams toward the bottom of the conference could give them some challenges as well, and Jamie Straube said that means winning on the road.

“All the teams we play in the Big 12, it’s tough to play away at all those schools,” Straube said. “So I think we’re really just going to have to be focused and not look too far ahead if we have a big game coming up or anything like that, but just making sure that we’re as prepared and focused for one team at a time.”