All season long, Iowa State has been saying that its goal is to finish in the top five of the Big 12 Conference. After this weekend’s game, however, Nebraska (8-8 Big 12) put the fifth spot mathematically out of the Cyclones’ (23-27, 5-11 Big 12) reach.

“That’s okay,” junior catcher Alex Johnson said. “We still want to win, and we are still going to do our job. We still have at least five games left in the season, so we will take those wins and see what we can do.”

The team is starting to turn its attention to the Big 12 tournament.

“If you look at the Big 12 tournament the last two years, a really low seed has gone really far,”said head coach Stacy Gemeinhardt-Celser. “There is no telling with a single elimination tournament, especially since we played Oklahoma so well, we beat Missouri, and we played Texas really well, everybody has a chance, and that’s what we want to hang on to going into the tournament.”

Before the tournament starts however, Iowa State must face Creighton on Wednesday at 3 p.m. at the Southwest Athletics Complex for a double header.

Iowa State is currently 1-1 against teams from the Missouri Valley conference with a 1-0 win over Wichita State and a 6-4 setback to Northern Iowa. Gemeinhardt-Cesler said she is expecting a couple more close games against the Valley conference leaders, who have won six of their last seven games.

Iowa State has been on a bit of a roll of their own recently, picking up a split in each of their last four Big 12 series, but Sunday’s loss to Texas A&M left a bit of a bad taste in the team’s mouth.

“I’m looking to get some wins,” Johnson said. “The loss on Sunday was rough after we beat them, so I just want to win tomorrow, and win this weekend, and win at Big 12’s and finish off the season on a good note.”

The team will have to finish the season strong during the most stressful time of year for college students.

“It’s a stressful time for everybody, you know,” Gemeinhardt-Cesler said. “It’s dead week, and finals are next week. But everybody is going through these same feelings, its stressful for everybody everywhere. It’s just using this as an escape, you get to come here and you don’t have to worry about studying or doing anything else for a couple of hours, so we will see what we do.”

The Cyclones go into the end of the season with sophomore pitcher Rachel Zabriskie within striking range of the school record for innings pitched. Zabriskie has pitched 251 innings so far, just 28 innings behind Suzanne Wedemeier, who set the record in 1982.

Zabriskie has been forced into taking nearly all the innings since March 22 due to injuries, and is starting to feel the wear and tear.

“She has been beat up for a long time now,” Gemeinhardt-Cesler said. “I mean, she is always going to go out there and compete, but does she feel like its February? I definitely don’t think so, but I think she will do okay.