After ending their 11-match losing streak and getting their first Big 12 Conference win of the season Saturday at Baylor, the Iowa State women’s volleyball team failed to continue their winning ways Wednesday night at Hilton Coliseum, falling to the Kansas Jayhawks in straight sets 3-0.

The first game was back-and-forth until Kansas scored six straight points behind the serving of Jennifer Kraft and took a 19-11 lead. Iowa State was unable to come back and Kansas took the game 30-20.

“I felt that we came out pretty tentative in game one and especially in the area of passing,” Iowa State head coach Linda Crum said.

“Passing is so important for us to have offense.”

Senior Mandi Harms also noticed that bad passing was one area the hurt the team.

“When we were passing well we were right in the game but every time they seemed to score our passing was off,” Harms said. “I think that is where they got a lot of their points, from our bad passing.”

In Game 2, Kansas jumped out to an early 4-1 lead before the Cyclones had a run of five points to put them back on top, 5-4. Down 16-14, Kansas scored four unanswered points to lead 18-16. Kansas still had the lead at 29-24 when two consecutive kills by Mandi Harms put the score to 29-26. Kansas was able to score one more point to take the game 30-26.

The third game saw Kansas take an early 5-0 advantage and the Cyclones just didn’t have enough to recover. The Jayhawks used many scoring runs en route to claiming the game 30-16 and the match 3-0.

“They came back in Game 3 and obviously the first five points went right away to Kansas. Part of that is just us being vocal and creating the chemistry on the court because we’re talking, we’re doing some things that create some dynamics,” Crum said.

“I am just very disappointed with our kids in the area of working hard vocally and creating chemistry. That is just one area we have to get better in, and hopefully in these next matches they will see that and start to catch on and take the next step.”

The loss drops Iowa State’s record to 10-14 overall and 1-11 in the conference. Kansas improves to 16-5 on the season and 7-5 in league play.

“We came out and didn’t play as well as we wanted to tonight. We had high expectations for ourselves and we knew that we could come out here and win,” Harms said. “We had a lot to prove to Kansas but we just didn’t do it tonight.”

Again Crum stressed the importance of ball handling.

“I don’t think we did a good job of putting our setter, middles or our right side play Renae Pruess in a chance to get into a groove offensively,” Crum said. “I think Kansas in their preparation keyed in on taking [Pruess] out of the match.”

Pruess, who had 12 kills in the first meeting with Kansas, was only able to get one kill this time around. Harms led the Cyclones with 14 kills while Brittany Dalager added nine kills and 15 digs. Sara Stribe recorded 17 kills for Iowa State.

Saturday the team travels to Manhattan, Kansas, to take on the Kansas State Wildcats to whom they lost 3-0 in their first meeting earlier this season.