The ISU volleyball team found itself in a place Wednesday that it hadn’t been since Oct. 16, 2000 — a five-game match.

The five-game match was the Cyclones’ first in conference play since Nov. 24, 1999, when they beat Kansas 3-2.

Wednesday night, the Cyclones were taking on the Oklahoma Sooners and lost 3-2.

“We’re disappointed,” ISU setter Sara Stribe said. “We need to come out with the mentality that we are going to win. We competed well, but we know we could have played better.”

Oklahoma jumped out to the early 4-0 lead in game one, but Iowa State was able to rally back and tie it up, 6-6. The scoring would remain even until the Cyclones went on a six-point run to lead 19-15. Oklahoma used a run of its own to decrease the Cyclones’ lead to 21-19, but the Sooners didn’t come within two points the rest of the game, and the Cyclones took game one, 30-24.

Game two started with the Sooners taking a 4-0 advantage. Iowa State was down 3-9 before the Cyclones scored six unanswered points to tie the game. In the run, three consecutive points were scored off blocks. The first was a double block with Mandi Harms and Ashlie McWee, the second with McWee and Stribe and the third with McWee and Harms again.

The game was another back-and-forth battle with neither team taking a commanding lead. With the score 25-26 in favor of Oklahoma, the Sooners ended the game with a four-point run to win 30-25.

“We did a good job in game one coming out,” ISU head coach Linda Crum said. “We obviously started out games one and two pretty slow, but we did a really good job of coming back, responding and playing each ball and competing.”

Game three was all Oklahoma. The Sooners started with the early 6-0 lead and continued with their scoring all the way to a 30-13 win.

Iowa State answered back in game four, using a five-point run on its way to a 30-24 win.

Game five would be the deciding game, with the first to 15 taking the game and the match.

The game started with each team winning every other point. Iowa State was the first to take two consecutive points with two kills by Brittany Dalager.

The scoring remained close with Iowa State up 10-9, when Harms’ serve went into the net. Oklahoma then scored another point. A kill by Renae Pruess again evened it up 11-11. Oklahoma scored two more points before a Sooner service error made the score 13-12, Oklahoma.

A service error by Pruess and another Sooner point gave Oklahoma the game 15-12.

“At the end of game five, what I really noticed was that we had our opportunity and we just didn’t take advantage of it,” Crum said. “It’s that close to 10 and you have two service errors and let two balls drop. That’s you not working hard enough to get the win.”

Iowa State dropped to 10-14 overall and 1-10 in the Big 12 with the loss, while Oklahoma improved to 5-17 and 3-11.

The match did see two players set career marks. Mandi Harms hit a career-high 21 kills and Brittany Dalager had 28 digs.

“I thought that Mandi did a good job in terms of her offense. Brittany did a good job,” Crum said. “Katie Kruenegel did a good job of coming back into the match. She started out pretty slow, but I think she ended the match pretty well.”

Kruenegel ended with nine kills, Pruess with eight and Dalager 17. Stribe paced the offense with 52 assists.

Crum said the game was a disappointment for the team, but they need to take it and learn from it.

“It was like an up-and-down roller coaster where we didn’t take advantage of some opportunities that I thought would have put momentum on our side and given us a solid victory,” she said.