A solid first game wasn’t enough as the ISU volleyball team fell in straight sets, 3-0, to Kansas on Wednesday night.

The Cyclones outplayed their counterparts for much of game one before dropping the last four points and the set, 28-30.

“In game one, I thought we came out, we played strong, we played steady,” head coach Linda Crum said. “… It was just a whole momentum shift in the last five points of the first game.”

After the letdown, Iowa State came out sluggish in game two and dropped the set, 18-30.

Crum said that everything positive she saw in game one quickly turned bad in game two.

“Our hitting just went negative. Our hitters became very tentative, they weren’t moving their feet,” she said. “Our passers didn’t really do anything in terms of giving good first contact. Nothing aggressive was really going on there, and last of all, [Kansas] became the offense and just were hammering at us, and we were just sitting back and letting it happen.”

Despite coming out strong in game three, the Cyclones surrendered the lead and lost the game, 21-30.

“In the beginning, there was a lot of fire, there was a lot of hard work, there was a lot of effort, and that was obviously our goal to start out that way,” Crum said. ” But then we just kind of let down, and they took control again.”

Junior Mandi Harms led Iowa State with 13 kills while freshmen Brittany Dalager added nine kills and 17 digs.

Setter Sara Stribe passed the offensive attack with 30 assists, and April Gerloff also played well, recording 13 digs.

Gerloff said the Cyclones knew “this was a match [they] could take,” but they didn’t get the job done.

“I think our level of confidence declined in the second and third games, that was probably our biggest weakness,” she said. “We knew we could do it. We just didn’t go through with it.”

Gerloff said that if the team could of just kept up the same pace as it had in game one, the match might of gone differently.

“In that first game, we were having fun with volleyball,” she said. “We were playing it like we know we can play the game, playing with melodrama, and all the skills were just coming through. There were parts in the third game that definitely showed that. We just needed to be more consistent instead of up and down.”