Of all possible games on the conference schedule, the ISU women’s basketball team may have picked the worst time to forget how to score points. The Cyclones were out of sync for most of Saturday afternoon, shooting just 33.5 percent from the field and 4-17 (23.4 percent) from behind the arc in a 59-52 losing effort on the road against No. 17 Kansas State.

“They are a very, very good defensive team,” coach Bill Fennelly said. “It’s a unique kind of team. They have their leader in [Shalee] Lehning, who can lock down the ball handler, and their big kids can go out on the floor and guard just about anyone. And that makes it hard to score on them.”

Iowa State (13-4, 1-2 Big 12) had its chances to score against the Wildcats (15-1, 2-1), but could not finish plays on several occasions and continued to struggle at the charity stripe.

“What makes it frustrating is when you have an opportunity to score, you have to score,” Fennelly said. “They can really guard, but they can’t guard the free-throw line or a play that is uncontested. We only turned the ball over ten times, but against a good defensive team like that you have to be very efficient on offense.”

Bolte shines at the start of conference play

Apparently there’s something about the month of January that brings out the best in sophomore Kelsey Bolte. Last season as a true freshman, Bolte led the Cyclones in scoring in four of the first five Big 12 games, scoring no less than 17 points and dropping a total of 101 points in that period. She averaged 19.3 points in six January games in 2008.

Lask week, Iowa State received more of the same offensive prowess from Bolte. In the team’s two road losses to No. 5 Baylor and No. 17 Kansas State, Bolte knocked down 15 of 25 shots, including a 8-12 mark from behind the arc, to lead the Cyclones offensively by pouring in 20 points in each game.

If Iowa State would have won one of those two games, Fennelly said he thought Bolte would have been Big 12 Player of the Week, considering what she did, and who she did it against.

 “We certainly hope that this continues because one thing we have been searching for consistently is a third scorer,” Fennelly said. “We can’t expect her to continue to shoot it that well, but to be that aggressive, to take the ball to the basket a little more, she looked like the wanted the ball more and didn’t just rely on shots when the ball was kicked to her.”

It’s anybody’s game in the Big 12

It’s only three games into the conference season, and ten teams already have a loss against a Big 12 opponent, while just two teams have lost all three. Iowa State sits in the lower half of the conference standings with a 1-2 record, but things are looking up with a midweek home matchup with Missouri (10-6, 1-2) and a weekend road game against Nebraska (9-7, 0-3) this week.

The Cyclones are coming off three consecutive games against ranked teams, and solid week would help keep them among the contenders for a league title.

“It’s a big week for us. After three games almost everybody else has lost at least once, and by Sunday afternoon you still want to feel like you’re in the middle of things and not knocked out early, which makes these two games are very important.”