Women’s basketball coach Bill Fennelly wants all of his players to have an impact on the game and this season defense seems to be the natural method of impact for most of the team.

“I always tell them, ‘find a way to impact the game,'” Fennelly said. “Find a way to impact winning, if you’re not making shots than defend, rebound, be a cheerleader, set a screen, and they’re doing it.”

Coming into the Cyclones 69-41 victory over Northern Iowa on Tuesday night, they were ranked eighth nationally in scoring defense, and first in the Big 12. Their defensive scoring average, which was 50.8, dropped into the 40’s after the contest. The Cyclones could now find themselves amongst the top five nationally with a defensive average of 49.7.

Fennelly and his coaching staff knew the team would be able to defend, but no one could ever predict this sort of success.

“We thought we could defend, but I don’t think there’s any way to know we’d be as good as we have been,” Fennelly said.

Northern Iowa’s head coach Tanya Warren, who was once an Iowa State assistant, says the Cyclones defense will give many more teams headache’s this season.

“They’re big and they can switch screens; we were stagnant tonight, but their size and ability to switch will trouble many, many teams this year,” Warren said. “Their (defense) is really good.”

The Cyclones defense held the Panthers to a sub-par 30.8 percent field-goal percentage. The Cyclones, who rank 20th in the nation in rebounding margin at plus 9.9, were also able to pull down the majority of those Panther misses. The Cyclones grabbed 45 rebounds compared to 24 by Northern Iowa.

“We had a little bit of a height advantage,” said junior Nikki Wieben. “We can give credit to Amanda Nisleit, who had 10 rebounds. We didn’t rebound really well against Creighton so we really wanted to come out and do it tonight.”

The Cyclones are now 8-1 and will take their defensive dominance and rebounding resilience north to Minnesota to take on the Big Ten’s Golden Gophers who are 8-3.

Minnesota defeated Northern Iowa 68-57 earlier in the season and is coming of a 66-54 lost to Utah on Dec. 8. Coach Fennelly compared this juncture of the season to baseball.

“8-2 is really good, but 9-1 is a hell-of-a-lot better,” Fennelly said. “It’s like baseball, if you’re 3-3 and going up for the fourth time, the really good ones will want to get a fourth hit, they won’t be satisfied.”

The game against Minnesota will be played Friday Dec. 21 at 7:00 p.m. at Williams Arena in Minneapolis. It will be televised on the Big Ten Network.