Disappointment and winning don’t usually go hand-in-hand, but disappointment is the word coach Christy Johnson-Lynch used Tuesday after the Cyclones swept Colorado 3-0 (25-13, 25-9, 25-22).

Coming off two losses against Missouri and Oklahoma, the team was looking for a win against Colorado to boost morale at the tail end of a grueling season.

Johnson-Lynch admitted that it’s always good to get a win, but despite the numbers indicating victory on the scoreboard, she said she was still not satisfied with her team.

“I’m very disappointed,” Johnson-Lynch said. “Our issue is if can we play well for a whole two hours, a whole match. And we should have been able to do that [Tuesday].”

Consistency has been something the team has struggled with all season, whether it’s starting slow or weakening at the finish.

One culprit has been mental toughness — the ability to mentally endure more than an hour and a half of Big 12 play. The Cyclones have the potential to do this, as individual members of the team have played entire matches at the level Johnson-Lynch desires.

“A lot of people can do something good once or twice, but can they do something good 20 times?” Johnson-Lynch said. “We have lots of players capable of it. I’ve seen them all do it. But I don’t know if we have anyone that does it consistently.”

The other factor in maintaining stamina throughout a match can simply be easing up in a response to winning, particularly winning by a large margin.

Tuesday, the Cyclones went into the third set with three players hitting above .400 and a team percentage of .379. They held the Buffaloes to a single-digit score of nine during the second set, the lowest number of points by an ISU opponent in a single set this season.

With a sweep comfortably in sight, the Cyclones eased up during the last set. They allowed the Buffaloes to get 22 points. At the end of the match Iowa State’s percentage had dropped to .323 with only Victoria Henson hitting above .400.

“I don’t think we took [the third set] as seriously as we did the first two sets, which is kind of frustrating,” said middle blocker Jamie Straube. “It’s bad to say it, but we kind of let ourselves relax a little bit too much.”

The team has been working on pressure-packed finishing situations in practice. They’ll run six-on-six drills with the score set within two points of the end of a set. Whichever team loses the match will usually have to run or do push-ups.

Even though the team practices finishing strong, middle blocker Debbie Stadick said it can still be physically and mentally difficult to do in a match.

“When you’re starting to get going and you have a lot of energy, it’s a little bit easier,” Stadick said. “You still have fresh legs, and you can still yell. But after awhile the kills don’t seem as exciting and it gets harder, but there’s really no excuse for it.”

Although the team didn’t finish strong Tuesday, it still got a much needed win as it approaches the end of the season. The team has only three regular-season matches left to attempt a completely consistent match before the first round of the NCAA tournament in December.

Johnson-Lynch, herself a member of Nebraska’s NCAA Championship team in 1995, knows how difficult finding focus for an entire match is, especially at the end of a season.

“It’s a symbol of the whole season — long and grueling, hard on your body and mentally-taxing,” Johnson-Lynch said. “It’s a reflection of how tough it is to push through a whole season and peak at the end instead of burning yourself out.”

The Cyclones will next head to College Station, Texas, to take on Texas A&M at 2 p.m. Sunday.