If Bill Fennelly said it to the press a handful of times, one can imagine how many times his players heard it.

Fennelly called the ISU women’s basketball team’s defensive effort “atrocious” after its season-opening win on Nov. 16, in which it surrendered 44 second-half points. Fennelly continually preached the necessity for improved defense, and in Nov. 18’s 84-67 victory against Drake (0-2, 0-0 MVC) it appeared his team got the point — but only for the first 20 minutes.

Iowa State (2-0, 0-0 Big 12) used a deep rotation early, with 11 Cyclones getting playing time in the game’s first 11 minutes. The effect of fresh ISU legs was obvious on the defensive end, but Fennelly said the deep rotation was actually the product of searching for energy from his bench.

“[We were] trying to find somebody that wanted to play,” Fennelly said. “We got caught standing around and I think there was one possession I think [Drake] just shot the ball back and forth to each other and we just kind of stood there. We were searching for a post player, to be honest with you, to give us some energy.”

But as the Cyclones seemed to solve their second-half defensive woes from two days prior, problems again began to emerge.

In an effort to dig out of its 24-point halftime deficit, Drake began using one guard to press whoever brought the ball up the court for the Cyclones — often times Nikki Moody and Jadda Buckley.

The in-bounder would leave the ball handler on an island with the DU defender. When the ISU ball handler was forced to make an impromptu cross-court pass, the DU defense ball-hawked like an NFL safety on the high-school gridiron.

“You can’t give up 46 points in the second half, you can’t give up the rebounds, you can’t foul,” Fennelly said. “You just can’t do those kinds of things. For the most part, for 25 [or] 30 minutes we played well…I’m not taking anything away from Drake — they just kept playing and you got to give them credit.”

The Bulldogs capitalized off the ISU turnovers by getting out in transition to help build an 11-0 run that closed the gap to 64-49.

“I have no idea what the runs were, I just know that I liked the way we started to rebound the ball a little bit better,” said DU coach Jennie Baranczyk. “Obviously we dug ourselves in a huge hole in the first half, but I really think it was the way that [DU guard Caitlin Ingle] played on the defensive end.”

Drake was never able to cut the deficit to single digits, as the Cyclones eventually found a way to handle the pressure and Moody was able to regain control of the ISU offense as the final minutes ticked away. Moody had such a handle on the offense throughout the game that she flirted with a triple-double, posting 18 points, 12 assists and eight boards.

Though it would have been the first triple-double by a Cyclone since Alison Lacey’s against Iowa in 2009, Moody said it never even crossed her mind.

“I had no idea. I could’ve [played] a lot better,” Moody said. “I didn’t take control of the offense like I should have. I feel like, in a sense, I let my teammates down with how many turnovers we had and the mistakes we made.”

Though Fennelly described Moody’s game as “on the verge of one of the all-time monster games” at Hilton, Moody and the team alike ultimately made mistakes preventing them from putting on a real show.

“Like everyone else, there were some times where she just decided [to] throw the ball away or not guard someone,” Fennelly said. “We all did things to take away from what we could’ve done.”