South Dakota State setter Sydney Howard recorded a career-high seven kills, tied a career mark with six block assists and Kaitlin Klingemann set a new career-high with eight block assists, but No. 21 Iowa State finished with a 56-33 advantage in kills in a 3-0 win on Tuesday at Frost Arena.
"The way that we were able to get solid touches at the net really frustrated some of the Iowa State attackers, and I think our ability to spread the ball around on defense was key tonight," SDSU head coach Phil McDaniel said. "We may not have gotten as many kills as we wanted, but we were certainly able to control the number of errors we made offensively."
The loss by the set scores of 25-22, 25-19 and 25-22 drops the Jackrabbits to 16-10. The Cyclones improve to 14-7 with the win.
Along with her career-high eight block assists, Klingemann led the Jackrabbit offense with nine kills. Howard got her seven kills on 10 attacks with no errors for a .700 hitting percentage. Margit Hansing led the Jacks with 14 digs, Kelly Herrmann added 12 and Shay Birath 11 digs.
Mackenzie Bigbee led the all players in the match with 13 kills. Victoria Hurtt added 12 kills in the win, while Kristen Hahn led the ISU defense with 25 digs.
The Jackrabbits looked overmatched early, but battled through some early match jitters, and an 18-8 deficit in the first set to close the gap to three points at 24-21 before the Cyclones won the set.
SDSU fell into an early 4-1 hole in the first set, but came back to take the lead on four different occasions before the Cyclones put the match away with a late 4-0 run.
Trailing 4-2 in the third set, the Jacks used a 5-0 run to go up 7-4, only to see the visitors respond with a 4-1 run to tie the set at 8-all. SDSI would force three more ties, but would never regain the lead in the set.
"We go back to work tomorrow to get ready for another weekend of conference play," added McDaniel. "There was great energy in the gym tonight and all season long, so on behalf of the team, we'd like to say a big 'thank you' to all of the fans, and we hope that some of them make a trip to see us play again this year."
The Jacks return to Summit League play on Friday, when they travel to Vermillion to take on South Dakota at 7 p.m.
