Ever since Christy Johnson arrived in Ames in 2005, the ISU volleyball team has relied heavily on the abilities of its defense.

Thus far this season, the Cyclones lead the Big 12 in blocking (3.40 blocks per game) and have held opponents to the second-lowest hitting percentage (.163) in the conference, but have yet to see consistent numbers on the offensive side of the ball.

“As a staff, we have always believed that great defense, serving and passing are the most important parts of the game,” Johnson said. “That’s what wins matches. If you can have strong fundamentals on defense, then the offense will follow.”

Johnson credits a lot of the strong defensive play to assistants Joe Lynch and Dawn Sullivan, who have played a huge role as defensive trainers for the team.

But recently, the Cyclones have seen drastic improvement on the offensive side of the ball, which has turned them into more than a one-dimensional team.

“I’m very happy with how we’ve improved offensively,” Johnson said. “Tonight was one of our best offensive matches this season. Kaylee [Manns] has worked very hard to get our hitters into the best situations possible, and made it hard for Kansas to camp on any one player.”

The sophomore setter Manns notched her fourth 40-set assist performance in a three-game match when she added 46 in Wednesday’s 3-0 sweep of Kansas. She also tacked on 12 digs for her fifth double-double of the year, and her third in as many matches.

“We’ve worked a lot on offensive situations in the past week,” Manns said. “I’ve been working on becoming more deceptive, and we’re developing smarter plays and have been doing a better job of getting out hitters in one-on-one situations with the defense.”

Despite the upswing of offensive numbers, the Cyclones are still struggling in their serving game. Iowa State ranks dead last in the Big 12 in service aces per game and have had at least nine service errors in each of their last four matches.

“I think being a little overaggressive has been [a] big part of our serving problems,” said senior Erin Boeve. “Granted, errors are going to happen, but we’ve had a little too many, and we’re really working hard on improve that.”

Boeve has played a huge role in the insurgence of the Cyclone offense, not hitting below .333 and having at least 12 kills in each of the last three matches since moving back to middle blocker.