It was perhaps one of her best games to date, maybe in her whole career.

As the senior walked off the court, she did so with 30 points — a career best. She also added five assists.

But even though Nikki Moody had just completed one of the best games in her ISU career, it wasn’t enough. Iowa State dropped its third game in a row.

That was Feb. 4. Now, just three days later, Iowa State (14-7, 5-5 Big 12) is looking to break its losing streak when the team hosts West Virginia (14-8, 4-6 Big 12) at 6 p.m. Feb. 7.

“I think it’s going to be really key for us to get a win,” said ISU guard Brynn Williamson. “You talk about all the other teams in the league and everyone is just hungry, but we really need to get a [win]. A lot of teams have the same mindset right now and that’s just going to make it harder.”

After sitting near the top of the conference standings, the current three-game plunder has put the Cyclones in an interesting position. Winning the next few games could propel the team back near the top, but losing runs the risk of slipping right down to the bottom.

“We’ve lost really close games — games that we could have won and it just didn’t fall our way,” Moody said. “But we’ve been focusing up and I think that we’ll be fine,”

Moody was the only Cyclone to finish with double-digit figures against the Sooners, something that the team has struggled with lately.

After reviewing the game film, Fennelly saw what he believes part of the problem was.

“We talk about shot selection here all the time,” Fennelly said. “Most people when you think of shot selection you think I’m taking a bad shot. Well for us it’s passing up a shot. At this level, you’re not going to be wide open every time. You’ve got to take a shot under a little bit of duress at times.”

Fennelly strung together clips from the last game for the players, showing them examples of when they passed up potential open shots.

After watching the film herself, Williamson came to a similar conclusion. She found that the team simply wasn’t ready to shoot.

“We can’t be shocked when we are open,” Williamson said. “I think that’s a lot [of the] reason why we’re missing shots because we are so surprised that were open that we’re not ready to shoot the ball.”

Finding better shots and not passing them up has been a big focus in practice the past few days and something that the team is really looking to improve before the West Virginia matchup.

And with the Mountaineers on a two-game win streak, the team knows just how important it is to not pass up shots and play better team basketball.

“Basketball is the ultimate team game,” Fennelly said. “When we struggled offensively and it’s only been one or two people [scoring], we struggle to win … we certainly need more than one person getting 30 and everyone else standing around and watching.”