Less than a week into the Big 12 season, the ISU women’s basketball team will host its second top 10 team. Keeping a low turnover count could help the Cyclones (9-5, 0-3) to their first conference win of the season against the Aggies.

“You can’t score if you don’t have the ball, so those turnovers really killed us,” said guard Brynn Williamson on the team’s high turnover count against Kansas on Wednesday night (23). “We’re going to have to play like every team we play is No. 1 in the nation.”

The defending national champion Aggies (10-4, 1-2) enter Hilton as the No. 10 team in the country, but struggle with turnovers themselves and have just one shy of the Cyclones with 226. To combat this, center Anna Prins said it needs to start in practice.

“We do turn it over a lot in practice and it transfers over into the games, so we have to work on that because obviously in this league we can’t have turnovers, especially on the road if we want to pull out wins,” Prins said.

Freshman guard Nikki Moody also added that situations will help keep that number down.

“Just trying to make every situation like the game situation in practice and try to learn from what we did last game and things like that and try to improve,” Moody said.

On the scoring end, Iowa State’s bench has notched 51 points against conference opponents this season compared to Texas A&M’s 33, and Williamson said keeping that number is key as well.

“I think a big impact from our bench players is everyone goes in there with the mentality that ‘I need to do what I need to do, and when I come out, it’s not what did I do wrong, it’s when I get back in there, how am I going to help the team,'” she said.

Last Saturday, the Cyclones tipped off their conference season against the No. 1-ranked Baylor Lady Bears. The game was up for grabs until the final five minutes, and with that in mind, Williamson said she doesn’t put much thought into the number before the name.

“I think it’s about you coming into the game thinking everyone is going to be the best people you’re going to play the whole season,” she said. “You can’t walk out the ramp at Hilton that night and think that you left something there or you could have don’t something more.”

After the Baylor game, Lady Bears coach Kim Mulkey commented on the fan support at Hilton and how much the fans love women’s basketball, and Prins said that always works in their favor when they’re playing a tough team and getting them going is big.

“We have a great fan support, so getting them into the game is important as well,” she said. “They make it fun.”

Tipoff is set for 7 p.m. Saturday at Hilton Coliseum.