Iowa State’s losing streak rose to four after losses to Nebraska on Friday and Colorado on Sunday.

The Cyclones gave up seven goals to the two teams, the most they have allowed in back-to-back games all season.

“We didn’t sort out marking soon enough and we didn’t solve our issues with marking,” said junior co-captain Mary Kate McLaughlin. “We didn’t step up high enough when they dribbled at us, no one stepped, we were confused about who was going to step, and we just dropped off and gave them a lot of room to do what they wanted to do.”

McLaughlin was complimentary of a couple players in particular who were able to mark well.

“Jessie Stewart is our outside back and she did a great job of basically fulfilling her role, getting forward, marking who she was supposed to mark and additionally Meredith Skitt did the same thing,” McLaughlin said.

The Cornhuskers came into the game with one of the best records in the Big 12, but the thing that was more important to the Cyclones was their tough offensive attack and sophomore forward Morgan Marlborough.

“Nebraska just out-matched us,” said coach Wendy Dillinger. “They have huge forwards, they are very good, very dynamic and they did their job.”

Nebraska got the initial lead in the 27th minute when Marlborough scored her Big 12-leading 13th goal of the season on Cyclone keeper Maddie Jobe.

Marlborough was involved in another score just four minutes later, when she assisted the second goal of the game, scored by redshirt freshman forward Stacy Bartels.

“Morgan Marlborough is one of the best players I’ve ever seen,” Dillinger said.

Cyclone freshman midfielder Emily Goldstein gave Iowa State some confidence with a goal that sent Iowa State into halftime down 2-1.

“We actually had some decent chances in the beginning of the second half against Nebraska but again their forwards are just potent,” Dillinger said.

Iowa State hoped to keep Marlborough contained by not letting her turn, but what hurt the Cyclones the most was their mindset.

“I think the biggest thing is we came into the game intimidated knowing they that were good players and we didn’t step to them the way that we should have,” Stewart said.

“We let them turn a lot, we let them get shots off on goal, we didn’t body up on them while we were playing defense, and we really let them do what they wanted to do.”

Iowa State faced Colorado on Sunday for the second game of the weekend, but their inability to score and injuries were a tough pair to overcome.

Stewart scored the first goal of the game to put Iowa State up 1-0 in the 23rd minute, but the Buffaloes took away the Cyclone momentum soon after with a equalizer goal in the 30th.

“It was definitely rough. Putting the goal away was exhilarating, especially being in my home state and stuff,” Stewart said. “It’s always hard to come back when you just put so much effort into scoring and then you get scored against it’s hard to come back.”

Making the comeback this time was especially hard.

“Caitlin [Grabowski] obviously couldn’t play because she had a red card Friday night so we were down her, Jessie got a concussion so she was out for the game, Emily Hejlik got hurt, and both of those injuries happened in the first 30 minutes so there’s three people in our back line that we’re missing,” Dillinger said.

Senior co-captain Jordan Bishop has been a utility player for the Cyclones over her career at Iowa State, and she was moved to the back line to help stabilize the absences.

Colorado’s Kate Russell and Kym Lowry took advantage of the new back line, scoring goals in the 79th and 87th minutes to seal the 3-1 victory.

In each game, Iowa State was out-shot by more than 10, but the Cyclones hope they can learn from that and be more effective this weekend.

“It teaches us that it does matter when you shoot a lot, as opposed to when you don’t, because they out-shot us by 10 and they all had a lot more goals than we did so we just need to make sure we keep shooting from everywhere; it doesn’t matter where,” Goldstein said.

Goldstein added that their lack of playing together was the cause of some offensive struggles.

“The offense we really just didn’t play as a whole,” Goldstein said.

“We were looking more individually once things weren’t working, we weren’t playing together, we weren’t connecting, we weren’t playing peoples strengths, and we really just weren’t clicking with each other.”

Stewart said her head injury is on a day-to-day basis, and may be able to play Sunday ‘s home match against Texas.

“There is a possibility that I will be able to play on the Sunday game but it’s kind of just take each day at a time and depends on when my symptoms stop happening and all that,” Stewart said.

Iowa State’s next game is 6:30 p.m. Friday against Big 12 power Texas A&M and admission to all home games is free.