The ISU volleyball team dropped its third home Big 12 Conference match in a row Saturday night.

The Cyclones lost to No. 24 Texas A&M by a 3-1 score. The loss gave the Cyclones a 9-9 overall record and a 2-5 record in the Big 12.

In game one, Texas A&M pulled away and coasted to a 30-18 win. Katie Jessen paced the ISU offense with four kills and Renae Pruess added three. Lindsay Chapman had six sets, while Brittany Dalager led the defense with six digs and Pruess added four.

Pruess said the Cyclones didn’t come out the way they wanted to.

“In the first game, we just weren’t with it,” she said. “In the second, we started to get more focused in the second half of the game.

“We went into the locker room and came out with the attitude that we could play with the Aggies.”

The second game was a much closer game, as the Cyclones made a couple of big rallies. Early on it looked as though the Aggies were going to run away with the game, when they built an 8-2 lead.

Trailing 20-14, the Cyclones ran off four straight points, aided by a kill by Dalager and a key block by Jessen. But the Aggies held off the Cyclones 30-27 to lead the match 2-0.

Dalager led the balanced attack for Iowa State with seven kills, while Jessen had six and Pruess and Ashlie McWee each added five. Chapman had 17 sets and Dalager led the defense with nine digs.

Iowa State took their only game of the match in the third. The teams alternated leads, but with the score tied at 14-14, Iowa State started to take control of the game. Key kills by Pruess and Katie Kruenegel sparked Iowa State to a 21-15 lead. The Cyclones coasted to the 30-20 win, with Jessen and McWee getting key kills for Iowa State down the stretch.

“We played all-out in the third game — our ball handling was awesome and we were forcing them to make hitting errors,” Pruess said. “But the last game, we just let up, thinking we did our job. They just caught us off guard and we fell apart after that.”

The game three win cut the Aggies’ lead in the match to 2-1.

“It was good we came back in game three, and Ashlie McWee had a very good match with her blocking and offensive play. Brittany [Dalager] did very well, also,” said head coach Linda Crum. The Aggies won game four 30-16 to win the match 3-1.

Pruess said the team identified some communication problems earlier this week in practices.

“We did not do a good job [of communicating] during the Missouri match.” Pruess said. “For the Oklahoma match, we set a goal that we need to be communicating, and we’ve been focusing on that in all of our matches.”

Crum said she gives credit to the Aggies.

“Texas A&M is a good team, but we did not serve well in games one, two and four,” Crum said. “They took us out of our system. Also, the intensity in game three was not there in the other three games of the match. Our fight overall was not there throughout the whole match.”

Dalager led the way for the Cyclones with 14 kills and had 20 digs in the match. McWee had 11 kills, Jessen had 10 and Pruess added eight to the offensive attack. Chapman had 35 sets in the match. Also, libero Dana Koziol added 13 digs to the defensive effort.

Iowa State will get a break from Big 12 action when they host Drake at Hilton Coliseum Wednesday at 7 p.m. The Cyclones resume Big 12 play on the road Friday at Kansas.