As the final whistle blew for a Nebraska win, ISU volleyball coach Christy Johnson-Lynch looked at the scoreboard and shook her head.

Iowa State played three close sets and ended the match with a fourth set dominated by Nebraska, resulting in a home loss. The Cyclones were outscored in every category, but the team recognizes the areas it needs to improve in before its Big 12 opener against Texas Tech on Saturday. 

“Sets one through three was the best volleyball I’ve seen this season,” Johnson-Lynch said. “I’d like to forget [set four], but I know it’s not possible.”

Nebraska outscored Iowa State in all six main categories: kills, hitting percentage, digs, blocks, attacks and set assists. Nebraska’s dominance in statistics led to a four-set victory against Iowa State.

Iowa State competed closely with Nebraska and took one of the first three close sets. Nebraska became more relaxed in the fourth set and made Iowa State play its game with the soft serve, which resulted in the dominant fourth and final set.

Nebraska used a soft-serve strategy, making the defensive specialists dive for balls closer to the net and forcing them out of formation. Johnson-Lynch thought the team was prepared for this type of serve, but the fourth set showed it wasn’t ready.

“That third game was frustrating to see [Nebraska] serve us short and our players not be able to get out of it,” Johnson-Lynch said. “I take a lot of the responsibility for that because I thought we were ready for their short serve and we weren’t.”

Nebraska has three front-line players who are 6 feet 3 inches tall and could control the net. Senior libero Caitlin Nolan believes the fourth set got out of hand because of the number of blocks Nebraska had during that frame.

Even though Iowa State couldn’t defeat Nebraska, junior Ciara Capezio believes this was a stepping stone for the Big 12 season. She thinks this team is still capable of competing in the upper portion of the Big 12 conference.

“We just need to focus on serving tough and passing as good as we can to keep ourselves in the game,” Capezio said. “I think those are our two main focuses going into any match.”

The other focus is continuing to play hard in any situation throughout a match, and Nolan believes that’s what kept Iowa State in the game.

Despite the loss, Nolan and Capezio had noticeable individual statistics against Nebraska. Nolan had 25 digs, while Capezio had 15. Capezio also finished the match with 13 kills.

The focus for the team is not on the past but the future, namely its Big 12 opener against Texas Tech. Iowa State will take what it learned from this weekend and apply it to its first conference match of the season. 

“I think if we come into practice working hard and focusing on specific areas, I think we’ll be right there this Big 12 season,” Nolan said.