Iowa State is in the midst of one of the busiest portions of its schedule — eight games in nine days — and the team is in one of the worst situations to deal with this influx of games.

The Cyclones prepare to face North Dakota State in a double header, starting at 2 p.m. Tuesday at the Southwest Athletic Complex, with a depleted pitching staff. Iowa State is down to one pitcher — sophomore Rachel Zabriskie — who has thrown every pitch for the Cyclones since Charissa Carlin went down against Oklahoma on March 22.

She will not likely be able to keep that up, however, as coach Stacy Gemeinhardt-Cesler said Zabriskie making every pitch for the rest of the season would be “physically impossible.”

“We will probably go with [Zabriskie] as much as we can,” Gemeinhardt-Cesler said. “I think that probably [shortstop, Courtney Wray] will see some time, I think probably Lauren Kennewell will see some time, maybe Katie Harms.”

But Kennewell and Harms, the freshmen pitchers currently on the disabled list, are still questionable. Harms appears to be getting better as she made her first appearance in more then a month this weekend, hitting 1-for-2 with two sacrifice bunts against Texas Tech over the weekend. Kennewell has doubled her pitch count in the last week to 40 pitches.

“Going in and playing two games back-to-back [on Tuesday], that is going to be a bit different and challenging at this point,”

Gemeinhardt-Cesler said. “But it is what it is and we are still going to play hard and take it to them the best that we can.”

The Cyclones are on a brief respite from Big 12 play and look forward to the break.

“It is nice to play teams that aren’t in your Big 12 Conference and you don’t have all that pressure on you to win and move up in the ranks,” Zabriskie said.

They will use the relatively low pressure games to shore up some of the things they have been having trouble with recently.

“Probably just work on fundamental things like when we are up to bat: pitch selection, getting our bunts down, hitting the ball where we need to hit it, and getting our baserunners in when they are in scoring position,” said sophomore second baseman Carleigh Berry.

One thing the Cyclones have been having less trouble with is their defense.

The Cyclones started the season struggling in the field, making multiple errors in almost every game through the tournament part of their schedule.

Recently, however, the Cyclones have committed just one error in their last five games, a trend Gemeinhardt-Cesler expects to continue.

“In the last week we have been able to practice out here, we have played out here; we have played outside on the dirt,” Gemeinhardt-Cesler said. “When you are traveling around early to a lot of different parks, it’s a lot of different dirt, different types of conditions, and it just takes a little while to get acclimated to it.