After spending a week out of action, the ISU volleyball team didn’t exactly get the start it was looking for Wednesday night against Texas Tech.

The Cyclones came out flat against the Lady Raiders, and almost paid the price, narrowly coming away with a 34-32 victory in game one against the 10th-ranked team in the conference.

“We’ve been flat these last couple of days coming off the break, which shouldn’t have happened,” said setter Kaylee Manns. “And, after a terrible start we realized, halfway through the first game, that they really came to play and weren’t just going to give us this match.”

The primary reason the Cyclones allowed Texas Tech to stick around in the first game was a letdown of their most important weapon – defense. Iowa State, a team that relies heavily on blocking and defense, was not at the top of its game early on, and gave away a lot of cheap kills off of inadequate blocks.

“Our blocking was pretty poor in the first game,” said coach Christy Johnson. “They were getting a lot of kills off of bad blocks, and even if we did get a touch we weren’t able to handle the ball very well. But we were able to clean things up in games two and three.”

After a game one that featured 15 ties and five lead changes nearly slipped through their fingers, the Cyclones rebounded to quickly take control with a 6-0 lead in game two.

The momentum put the Cyclones in a groove and they never relinquished the lead, winning game two 30-15 while outhitting the Lady Raiders by a substantial margin, .419 to -.034.

“It took a while for us to find the rhythm that were hoping to have right away,” said senior Erin Boeve. “I think at first we were a little frustrated because we weren’t rolling like we thought we would, and it took us all of game one and part of game two to really get up to speed.”

When they finally reached the offensive tempo they were looking for, the Cyclones managed to take a huge advantage in kills (18-5) and digs (16-4) in a blowout game two. Iowa State also went on to win the hitting percentage battle for the match .339 to .233, marking the fourth time this season the Cyclones hit over .300 in a match.