By Michael Zogg

Daily Staff Writer

The Cyclones are right where they wanted to be heading into the Big 12 schedule: on a seven-game winning streak.

Iowa State (20–12) edged Creighton (14–11) by scores of 2–1 and 3–1 in Omaha, Neb., on Tuesday.

The double header was the team’s final tune-up before opening up the conference season.

The first game on Tuesday featured both teams’ aces in junior Rachel Zabriskie and Creighton’s three-time All-American Tara Oltman. Zabriskie won the battle with a ten-strikeout, three-hit performance.

“She threw really well,” said coach Stacy Gemeinhardt-Cesler.

“She has been a little bit sick so she didn’t practice yesterday and was able to really focus and do a great job. She worked ahead of batters, she kept people off base, kept them off balance. She did exactly what we needed her to do in order to win.”

Zabriskie was a little bit more subdued when discussing her performance.

“I feel like it could have been better but it was what it needed to be for today,” Zabriskie said.

“I felt like I didn’t have all my stuff, but I had enough to get through.”

Oltman battled a hot Cyclone lineup that peppered her with nine hits along with four Blue Jay errors, but surrendered just two earned runs by stranding 10 ISU runners.

Oltman had won both of her previous encounters with Iowa State, but the All-American didn’t intimidate Zabriskie.

“I was just worried about pitching to their batters and our hitters really took care of her,” Zabriskie said.

“It was a pitching duel, but because we were hitting the ball so much, it didn’t really feel like it.”

In the second game, the Blue Jays jumped out to a one run first inning lead, capitalizing on a hit batter, a wild pitch and two hits off of freshman pitcher Tori Torrescano.

Torrescano settled down, however, retiring the next ten batters in order.

The offense immediately erased the Creighton advantage in the top of the second as senior catcher Alex Johnson blasted a leadoff home run.

The next inning the Cyclones capitalized on three straight singles to take the lead.

Although the two-game 5 run total is a little bit less then Iowa State has been averaging recently, the team was hitting well, racking up 18 hits in the double header.

“We had 9 hits against Tara Oltman which is really good,” Gemeinhardt-cesler said.

“Our hitters did a good job putting the ball in play. We had a lot of chances, we ended up leaving 10 people on base [in the first game] but we were able to scratch across a couple runs.”

The Cyclones’ hitting spree was a team effort as nine of the 11 Cyclone hitters that had an at bat in the double header got at least one hit led by senior infielder Courtney Wray’s four hits.

“It wasn’t just a couple people carrying us, it was a lot of different hitters hitting throughout the line-up,” Gemeinhardt-Cesler said.

“That’s really fun to see.”

The pair of wins helped the Cyclones maintain momentum as they head to Texas Tech over the weekend.

“Getting both wins, and getting them the way we did was big going into the weekend,” Zabriskie said.

“It wasn’t just a fluke, we won both games fair and square.”