The end of the semester is always an important stretch for the ISU women’s basketball team, but coming off its first loss of the year escalates the magnitude of the team’s next few games.

Focus is paramount as the Cyclones try to bounce back against Stony Brook on Dec. 7 before a road trip to Iowa City on Dec. 11. With distractions abound, ISU coach Bill Fennelly is preaching the significance of powering through.

“This is a really important time of year,” Fennelly said. “A lot of kids are looking at going home, and right now, you got to finish school, you got to finish basketball…We talk all the time about finishing things here and the ability to start, it doesn’t matter. But the ability to finish and be determined to finish something, is very important.”

Bouncing back from the team’s first setback of the 2014-15 campaign may perhaps be more mental than anything, however.

The Cyclones played defense that was serviceable at worst, allowing St. Mary’s to shoot just 43.9 percent from the field en route to scoring only 67 points. In entirely non-Fennelly-coached style, it was actually Iowa State’s offense that put the Cyclones in peril.

Iowa State shot an abysmal 35.5 percent from the floor, and despite hitting 10 three-pointers, ended up falling by four points to the Gaels.

One of the bright spots for Iowa State, as she has been all season, came in the form of Emily Durr, who scored 10 points in 20 minutes off the bench. The self-described ‘shooter’ has filled that role coming off the pine all year for the team and shows no signs of slowing down.

“You just got to go in with nothing to lose and just play your hardest,” Durr said. “You’re going to have bad games, you’re not going to shoot as well as you hope, but as long as you play hard and your effort’s there, I think coach [Fennelly] sees that and he’s going to keep you in no matter what.”

With an opponent like Stony Brook arriving at Hilton Coliseum on Sunday, Durr and the plethora of ISU sharp shooters will be presented with the chance to put on a three-point shooting clinic against the top of the Seawolves’ newly installed zone defense.

“They have a new coach this year [and] a lot of interchangeable parts,” Fennelly said. “The zone thing is different. We don’t see a lot of that.”

Though the prospect of taking down a ranked Iowa squad looms large on next week’s horizon, ISU forward Brynn Williamson insisted the team’s time and energy remains on the task at hand.

“Iowa’s going to be a huge game, but right now it’s Stony Brook and, ‘How do we get past them?’” Williamson said. “I think after that game, we’ll kind of set in, especially for the freshmen, how big that game’s going to be next week.”

And with more than a week to prepare since their loss, the Cyclones are itching to get back out on the court.

“I think we’re hungry. We’re hungry for that next win and to come back and be stronger and be better,” Durr said. “I think we’re really hungry for a win and hungry to prove that we deserve a spot in the top [teams] of the country.”