So prior to the Wildcats' Saturday match in Lincoln, junior Lauren Mathewson and senior Kelsey Chipman confronted the team. They reinforced to their team a mindset and approach to their play that they were familiar with, but had seemed to be absent during the first leg of conference play.
The two vocal leaders gathered the team together and stressed the importance on fundamentals of the game.
"We have to do the little things," Mathewson said. "Individually, we are picking one thing and trying to concentrate on it instead of looking at the whole picture."
It's a theme that the Wildcats have tried to focus on the entire season. However it has been stressed greatly during their recent losing streak leading up to Wednesday's 7 p.m. home match against Missouri.
"It has been a program theme," Chipman said. "We just have to work on the little things. The little things are what win you game and right now we not a physical team, so we have to do all of the little things perfectly."
KSU coach Suzie Fritz said she has stressed the theme of fundamentals greatly this season with her young team.
"There is no question that we need to do little things well," She said.
On Wednesday the Wildcats will return home after a two-match road trip against Texas A&M and Nebraska. The road trip was part of a difficult six-match stretch to open conference play and included each of the top five teams in the Big 12 standings. The Wildcats played four of those five teams away from Ahearn Field House.
Yet Fritz feels that a brutal stretch such as the one her team opened conference play with has the potential to teach her squad a vast amount about itself.
"I think it teaches you how to be persistent." she said. "I think it teaches that you cannot lose confidence. We have to try and continue to grow and see who we are, and I hope it teaches them to aspire to greater things through adversity."
That adversity looks as though it could end Wednesday night. The Missouri Tigers have struggled on the road recently, dropping each of their first three conference matches away from Columbia.
The Wildcats won their last meeting with the Tigers in Manhattan decisively in four sets. K-State also defeated Missouri on the road in five sets.
K-State will look to emerging outside hitter Venessa Murray who is now averaging two kills per set after seeing her first action at Texas A&M and her first start at Iowa State.
Meanwhile JuliAnne Chilshom is leading the team offensively with 190 kills on the year and is averaging 3.06 kills per set.
The Wildcats will look to pick up their first conference win Wednesday evening, and Chipman said it would require the team to implement the fundamentals they have been stressing on during practice.
"It's been really hard we just have to pull together and try and improve everyday." She said.
