Iowa State finally managed to start out strong Saturday as it swept Oklahoma 3-0 (25-13, 25-19, 25-23) at the Ames High School gymnasium.

The Cyclones (10-2, 3-1 Big 12) have had a three-match streak of dropping the first set to their opponent, but they were able to come out with a commanding lead against the Sooners (10-4, 2-1).

Oklahoma, which is known for its defense, started out slowly, allowing the Cyclones’ offense to get in a groove.

“We haven’t come out very strong the past few matches, so we’ve been talking about it in practice,” said coach Christy Johnson-Lynch. “We talked about it [before the match]. I think they did a really great job of that, coming out strong and ready to play from the first point.”

Setter Alison Landwehr and middle blocker Jamie Straube especially hit their stride right away, with Straube notching five kills in the first set and Landwehr pitching in with 13 assists.

Landwehr also helped out the offense with several dumps in the first set, keeping the Sooners on their toes.

“I’m trying to do that more and more. The more confident I get, the easier it is to do,” Landwehr said. “It opens up our hitters a little more, so it’s something I’m going to continue to work on.”

A dump is when, instead of setting the ball for a hitter, the setter pushes the ball over the net in a surprise attack.

“When you have a setter that can dump the ball, it’s almost like another hitter,” Johnson-Lynch said. “You have another person you have to honor; you have another person you have to pay attention to defensively.”

With strong offense, Iowa State had out-killed the Sooners 36-23 by the end of the second set and also managed to out-dig them 27-25.

In the third set, the winds changed. Despite a slow start for Oklahoma, the hypnosis of the Sooners’ defense finally kicked in and put Iowa State in a daze.

“Their style of game, you can kind of get stuck in it,” Straube said. “They just keep going and going and sometimes we get kind of caught in their trance.”

The Sooners began to use long rallies in an attempt to slow down the Cyclone offense. They kept the ball in play and instead of going for the kill, they let Iowa State make the errors. Consequently, the Cyclones became hesitant and sloppy in their ball-handling and blocking.

“Oklahoma is a very good defensive team,” Johnson-Lynch said. “They started responding well after that second game and dug a lot of balls.”

The close competition in the third set was partly due to improved defense by the Sooners, but also proved the Cyclones are still capable of some inconsistency.

Even though Iowa State broke its trend of starting out slowly, Johnson-Lynch said one of the biggest challenges for any athlete is to play at a high level the whole time.

“[This match] was a strong start and kind of poor finish,” Johnson-Lynch said. “We don’t want to jump back and say that’s what we’re bad at, it’s just we’ve got to play at a great high level for an hour and 30 minutes.”

Even though the Cyclones lost momentum and the Sooners picked up the pace, Iowa State still managed to win the third set, 25-23, to complete the sweep.

The Cyclones will continue to work on consistency and staying focused for each point, something that will be particularly necessary as they move into the depths of their Big 12 lineup.

Iowa State will head to Austin, Texas, next to take on the Longhorns at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.