Iowa State trying to rebound after two losses in Minneapolis

Dylan Montz

In Minneapolis, Iowa State allowed its first goals of the season as well as suffered its first losses at the hands of No. 22 Milwaukee, 2-0, on Friday and Georgia, 2-0, on Sunday.

Despite being almost evenly matched with their opponents in all statistical categories, the Cyclones (3-2-1) did not come out with a sense of urgency to win, and sophomore midfielder Emily Goldstein said one of the team’s focuses will be to come out and compete every time the Cyclones take the field.

“We just didn’t come out hard from the start,” Goldstein said. “We just kind of came out too relaxed and we didn’t play like we did last weekend against Washington. We weren’t winning the 50-50 balls and we weren’t moving the ball or playing our game. We had our chances, but we just weren’t able to finish them.”

The area of improvement for Iowa State this week will be putting pressure on the ball because that was the weak spot of the team. Iowa State’s opponents each scored two goals against the Cyclone defense. Members also will focus on coming out every game and having a mindset to win.

“We just need to learn to come out and compete every game,” said ISU assistant coach Ben Madsen. “Teams won’t just roll over for you, you have to come out and make it happen. It has to be for the full 90 minutes, too; it can’t be just in spurts, especially against good teams.”

Goldstein also added the team will have a week to get refocused and gain back some confidence in preparation for archrival Iowa on Friday.

“We all know that we need to play a lot better than we did this last weekend,” Goldstein said. “We have some tough competition this weekend and we just need to get refocused and go work hard at practice.

“We just need to make sure that we work on the things that we saw this weekend that weren’t as good as they could have been and put that into our games for this weekend.”

Iowa State will take on the Hawkeyes on Friday at 7 p.m. in Iowa City. The match will be a part of the Iowa Corn Cy-Hawk Series.