Iowa was a Cyclone state in volleyball last year, and the ISU volleyball team would like to keep it that way.

The quest for the mythical state championship for the Cyclones (2-4) begins Wednesday in Cedar Falls against the UNI Panthers.

The Cyclones defeated the Panthers (3-3) 3-1 last year to wrap up a sweep of their in-state opponents.

ISU volleyball coach Christy Johnson said the matches with Northern Iowa, as well as Drake and Iowa, mean a lot early in the season.

“I’m sure both sides will have a little bit more emotion and a little bit more enthusiasm tomorrow night,” Johnson said.

Senior middle blocker Jen Malcolm said she is especially looking forward to these games, since she is from Iowa.

“It is my first time playing UNI since I just got here, too,” Malcolm said. “It means a lot to Iowa State if we win all the matches against the Iowa schools.”

One of the main features of the UNI offense, which is led by setter Kristin Belzung and middle blocker Ashten Stelken, is that they spread the ball around very well. Stelken leads the team with 57 kills on the year, but the fourth-leading hitter on the team, Shannon Aschoff, has 48 kills.

Johnson said defending against a team like Northern Iowa is much tougher because they do not just have one or two hitters that blockers can key in on.

“We’re going to have to stay balanced and try to stop several hitters,” Johnson said. “Especially depending on who’s hot that night, we’ll have to try to put up a good block on them.”

Malcolm said knowing the tendency of what each hitter likes to do will be important.

“We just got to know what they’re going to hit,” Malcolm said. “We can do a commit situation, so we just have to pick out the key ones we need think about.”

Iowa State is coming off a better weekend than UNI, splitting four matches in the Hilton Phoenix/East Mesa Challenge and finishing with a victory. The Panthers played in the Molten Classic at BYU, and, after a victory over American, were swept by the 10th-ranked Wisconsin Badgers and the 15th-ranked host Cougars in consecutive matches.

Sophomore setter Kaylee Manns said winning the last match was very important coming into this week against Northern Iowa.

“We started playing a lot better and we’re all coming together,” Manns said. “Everyone is going to have to just do their job. We know quite a bit about them, so we just have to go with our game plan.”