The ISU volleyball team beat visiting Kansas in a 3-0 sweep (25-15, 25-16, 25-11) on Wednesday night behind one of its best serving performances of the year.

No. 14 Iowa State (17-3, 8-1 Big 12) tallied 10 aces on the night and caused the offense for the Jayhawks (13-9, 1-8) to struggle to get momentum on their side.

“I felt like we really served tough and we really broke them down serve- and pass-wise, and it’s really hard to get going when you struggling passing,” said ISU coach Christy Johnson-Lynch. “I felt like we kept them out of their rhythm.”

It was Iowa State’s second victory against Kansas this season, but the Cyclones won by a much wider margin the second time around, due partly to a struggling KU offense.

“We knew if they got going offensively, they were going to be hard to stop, so we wanted to take them out of it with a tough serve and we definitely did that,” said junior middle blocker Jamie Straube, who had four aces in the match.

“Their setter was running all over the place and their hitters didn’t get to take their best shots.”

The Jayhawks were led offensively by Allison Mayfield, Sara McClinton and Caroline Jarmoc with five kills each, but all three had an attack percentage less than .120.

As a team, Kansas hit just .074 on the night with 24 kills on 94 attempts while committing 17 attack errors.

“Our defense was really good, we got some balls up that sometimes we don’t normally get up,” said senior outside hitter Carly Jenson. “They can struggle in serve and receive, so we kind of just broke them down.”

The Cyclones also had another double-digit blocking night, with 10.5 blocks as a team opposed to the five blocks registered by Kansas.

Straube led the Cyclones at the net with a solo block and three block assists on the night. Sophomore middle blocker Tenisha Matlock and junior setter Alison Landwehr led the Cyclones with four block assists each, a career-high for Landwehr.

Jenson, who had two block assists on the night, said their blocking is a work in progress.

“At the beginning of the year, we should have been a better blocking team and we just kept working on it, and it shows,” Jenson said.

Wednesday was just the second time all season that the Cyclones had no player in double figures in kills, with Jenson leading the attack with eight kills on a .227 hitting percentage.

“We’re working on not always bailing out to our outsides and involving our middles as much as we can,” Johnson-Lynch said. “It didn’t always work to perfection tonight, sometimes you saw a little mis-timing by the middle and the setter.”

Numbers would suggest that the balanced attack worked, as the Cyclones hit at a .315 clip on the night and had four different players hitting .667 or better.

The Cyclones will be back in action this Friday to take on No. 9 Texas in Austin, Texas, at 8 p.m.