The Iowa State Cyclones are set to host the West Virginia Mountaineers on Thursday night at Hilton Coliseum in their seventh game of the conference schedule.
The Cyclones are coming off a road loss against No. 15 Kansas and are currently 14-3 on the season. The Mountaineers are 13-4 so far this season, but all four of their losses are in conference play in a five-game stretch. Their lone conference win, however, is against No. 19 BYU.
West Virginia seeing major improvements
The Mountaineers come into Thursday’s matchup at 33rd in the nation in blocks per set, averaging 2.56. Their team’s hitting percentage of .272 is also 25th in the nation. Last year, the Mountaineers averaged 1.9 blocks per set and had a .193 hitting percentage.
“They’re much, much improved,” Iowa State head coach Christy Johnson-Lynch said. “They’ve been struggling the last couple of years, and with the new coaching staff last year, they improved a lot. They’re a good team. They beat BYU at home, and the Big 12 is at a point where everybody is pretty good.”
To combat West Virginia’s blocking, the Cyclones are 11th in the nation in kills per set and 31st in hitting percentage. The Cyclones average 14.25 kills per set and have a hitting percentage of .266.
Lots learned in Sunflower State road trip
While the Cyclones came out of Manhattan, Kansas, with a win over Kansas State, there was more to be learned from the loss against Kansas than the win two days before.
“Discipline and lack of discipline,” redshirt junior outside hitter Nayeli Ti’a said. “When you have a lack of discipline, it’s easily exposed by good teams like that.”
Freshman middle blocker Reagan Hanfelt believes that the discipline has been the main focus in practice leading up to Thursday’s game.
“We worked on that a lot in practice,” Hanfelt said. “You can tell by the level of intensity that it was different from what it had been [in previous practices]. I also think that there were a lot of different things going on during that Kansas game that were out of our control.”
The first serve of the match against West Virginia will be at 6:30 p.m. Thursday in Hilton Coliseum. The match can be watched on ESPN+.
