It was one of the Cyclones’ most dramatic wins of last season.

The Big 12 Tournament game between Iowa State and Baylor went 10 innings before a pair of back to back home runs lifted the Cyclones to a 6-4 win in the first round game — their first first-round win since 2000.

“That was pretty much the game of our lives,” said junior center fielder Kelsey Kidwell. “Rachel [Zabriskie] pitched phenomenal that game and we played really good defense.”

Now the Cyclones are preparing to face the Bears once again, in a rare Friday and Saturday series starting at 2 p.m. Friday at the Southwest Athletic Complex.

Although the Cyclones can feel good about last year’s final meeting with Baylor, they know that this time around will be a whole new challenge.

“They are not the same team as they were last year. They had some good players come in, they had a good player that left, so it’s going to be a whole different ball game,” said junior first baseman Sydni Jones, who hit the go-ahead home run against Baylor last season.

One new face for the Bears is freshman pitcher Whitney Canion.

She has carried the bulk of the pitching duties for Baylor this season and has responded to the challenge, earning a 1.55 ERA, a single-season school record 281 strikeouts and four Big 12 pitcher of the week honors.

Yet, even with the new challenges the team will face, last year’s game helps give the team a little bit of confidence.

“It’s always a confidence booster when you have won two out of the three times against a team last year, but again, this is a whole different year,” Jones said. “It’s a whole different year for us too.”

This year has been turbulent for the Cyclones with injuries and sickness.

They have also run into trouble recently, losing their last four games in a row, including a 7-1 loss at Iowa on Tuesday.

“At least we can say they are easy fixable things that we can work on in practice and put together for the Baylor game,” Kidwell said. “Like Iowa, for example, it was just small things like throwing errors and leaving people stranded, and that is something that is easy to work on.”

Yet, the throwing errors are not the basis of the problem. Head coach Stacy Gemeinhardt-Cesler feels the team has played too erratically this season.

“At times we are very good, and I think that at times we are not very good at all,” Gemeinhardt-Cesler said. “It’s a little hard to tell which team is going to come out right now. I know that it’s not something intentional that they are doing, and it’s not something intentional that we’re doing as a staff.

“It’s just coming out the same way every time, and that’s the way we competed Saturday against Oklahoma, and this past Saturday against Texas, and North Dakota State. Those are the games that we need to find repeat performances.”

Iowa State has struggled with inconsistency all season long and has been trying to find a cure. Recently, Jones feels that the team has showed some signs that they are coming out of the mid-season funk.

“We are always going to struggle with it, but I think we are getting better at being more consistent,” Jones said. “Especially going against Texas, we played them well both days; we played our game and we didn’t let them control us, so I think that was a big step, playing well on a Sunday.”