As the weeks go on for the Iowa State softball team, the Cyclones are focusing on fine-tuning their skills to sharpen their performance. The Cyclones are 3-5 headed into this weekend’s Holy City Showdown in Charleston, South Carolina.

Confidence builds after DeMarini Invitational

The Cyclones had a record of 1-4 headed into the DeMarini Invitational. However, the Cyclones took a step in the right direction as they went 2-1 and defeated the Colorado State Rams 6-5 and the Portland State Vikings 3-2 while losing to the Stanford Cardinal 2-1 in extra innings.

“We came back well after losing to Stanford,” said senior center fielder Taylor Nearad. “We knew we were going able to come back and win the next two games.”

The Cyclones are now 3-2 in neutral site games.

“Anytime you can win two out of three away from home I’m going to take that,” said Iowa State head softball coach Jamie Pinkerton.

The weather was quite a problem in Palo Alto, California, as two of the Cyclones’ games couldn’t be played due to heavy rainfall.

“Considering the circumstances, I thought they stayed focused and played well,” Pinkerton said. “We didn’t have our best performances hitting-wise in the Portland State game nor the Stanford game, but I thought we scratched well and pitched well enough and played good enough defense to hang around.”

Offense shows signs of life

For only the second and third time of the season, the Cyclones got five or more hits with a season-high seven hits against the Rams and six against the Vikings.

In total, Iowa State had a batting average of .200 in the tournament.

Against the Rams, the Cyclones put up six runs, which is the most runs they’ve scored in a game this season.

Against Portland State, a pair of home runs by senior center fielder Taylor Nearad and third baseman Logan Schaben propelled the Cyclones to a 3-2 victory.

“I thought we pitched the ball well and the offense came alive well enough to help the pitching out well enough,” Pinkerton said. “The long ball won us a game against Portland State, so it was good to see us break out the bats a little bit.”

The Cyclones haven’t been able to get the bats going so far this season as the team has a batting average of .170 through eight games. That ranks last in the Big 12 and 256th out of 269 Division I softball teams in the country. Iowa State also has the least amount of hits among Big 12 teams.

The Cyclones have lost all but one of their games by four runs including a pair of one-run losses against Stanford in extra innings and against the No. 1 ranked defending national champions Florida State in Tallahassee, Florida.

“We haven’t played our best in the past two weekends, and this is the weekend that we need to take control,” said senior left fielder Kirsten Caudle.