After being swept by Baylor last Sunday Iowa State got back into the win column and moved to 13-3 overall and 5-1 in the Big 12 on Friday night with a sweep over Texas Tech.
Here are three takeaways from the Cyclone’s eighth sweep of the season.
Nayeli Gonazlez shines
It is starting to feel like a broken record talking about Gonzalez, but she continues to stand out on the court.
Gonzalez built on last week’s Big 12 Rookie of the Week performance by leading the Cyclones in kills once again on Friday night with 15 while hitting an elite .429.
The freshman has been on a tear all season, leading the Cyclones in kills and points per set, so today was nothing new.
Cyclones continue dominance on the attack
Coming into today’s match, the Cyclones led the Big 12 in hitting percentage at .282, and tonight they continued their dominance.
The Cyclones hit .372 on Friday and the key to the Cyclone’s success has been simply having good players and being aggressive.
“We have a lot of good hitters, our middles are hitting really well, so the blockers on the other side have to pay attention to our middles,” Christy Johnson-Lynch said. “And that opens up Nayeli (Gonzalez), Lily (Wachholz) and Maya (Duckworth).”
Duckworth also gave the middles a lot of credit for their success.
“Our middles do a great job of getting up on every ball and it really makes a split for us in the block so that is really helpful,” Duckworth said.
Gonzalez talked about the things they worked on in practice that translated into the match against the Red Raiders and ultimately helped them get the sweep.
“We just go with all our power and we work on it a lot in practice,” Gonzalez said,
Plenty of contributors
It was not just Gonzalez putting up big numbers on the attack. Along with the 15 kills from Gonzalez, four other Cyclones recorded six kills or more.
Duckworth recorded nine kills on the night, Pam McCune and Jordan Hopp each had eight, and Lily Wachholz had six.
Both Johsnon-Lynch and the players give setter Morgan Brandt credit for spreading the ball around and keeping the defense on their heels.
“It makes life so easy for us because they don’t know who Morgan is going to set, Morgan is so good at moving it around every play so it makes it easy,” Duckworth said.
“Morgans doing a great job, she’s a great setter and she distributes really well and sets up a lot of 1-on-1 situations for our hitters,” said Johnson-Lynch.
Johnson-Lynch stressed that getting more players involved makes it much easier to find offensive success.
“If you can spread out the offense it just makes it so much more difficult to defend,” Johnson-Lynch said.
The Cyclones continue Big 12 play at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday in Manhattan, Kansas, with a matchup against Kansas State.
