Nearly halfway through the regular season, the ISU volleyball team is consistently finding itself on the outside looking in, but just by a hair.

Iowa State received votes to be ranked the first five poles of the season, but never cracked the top 25. Following a loss at Texas Christian, the Cyclones fell from the ‘receiving votes’ category and have remained there after splitting last week’s two matches.

With Monday’s release of the Rating Percentage Index rankings, or RPI, a value that measures wins and losses while accounting for strength of schedule, the Cyclones again sit just outside the top 25 spots as number 27.

Having three of her team’s five total losses come against the RPI top three Stanford, Florida State and Texas is not an excuse to ISU coach Christy Johnson-Lynch.

“I think we’re okay,” Johnson-Lynch said. “I don’t know that we’re at where we wanted to be. If you just look at stats, there’s some stats I would have hoped would be a little bit better at this point.”

One of the categories in which the Cyclones have lacked consistency is blocking, a stat the importance of which Johnson-Lynch has stressed since day one.

Iowa State started the season with nine blocks across its first three matches, had 57 over the next five contests and tallied 31 in its most recent five matches. The fluctuation in defense at the net can make or break a match, so the Cyclones are not giving up on finding a strong block.

“We focus a lot on blocking in every single practice,” said outside hitter Morgan Kuhrt. “We really have struggled with that the last few years and now we have a chance to become a really great blocking team, but we still have work to do.”

While Iowa State has room to improve in various aspects on the court, the Cyclones are also focusing on intangibles.

“The coaches have been preaching every day [about] coming in with a sense of urgency every play,” said libero Caitlin Nolan. “It’s so easy in this part of the season, just kind of coming in and going through the motions every day.”

Having that urgency in practice will also be effective on the court. Iowa State has often traded points with opponents at the beginning of matches, rather than starting out hot and jumping ahead early.

“It’s cracking down every day on how we can get better in every little thing,” Nolan said. “We come out a little sluggish in the first couple points and then we get down and we have to dig our way out of this hole. So really it’s coming out, trying to execute and have a lot of energy from the start.”

Though their 8-5 overall record does not look great on paper, Kuhrt said the defeats at the hands of top-tier opponents has been beneficial in the long run.

“It’s hard to lose, but I think it’s a good learning experience to point out what we really need to focus on and what we need to work on,” Kuhrt said. “It pays off to go through those setbacks so we can learn about ourselves and what we need to do going forward.”