Tuesday night’s women’s basketball game between NIU and the Wisconsin-Milwaukee Panthers never reached the fervor of the Huskies’ Thursday night thriller, but the end result was the same.

The Huskies (15-4) coupled blistering shooting and the steadily developing play of forward Angela Lockett to rout UW-M 112-64 at Chick Evans Field House.

“We didn’t need another one-point game tonight,” NIU head coach Jane Albright said. “We had that (Thursday), and we grew from it (an 81-80 win over Wisconsin-Green Bay). We were very excited to have a game like this.”

The Huskies, shooting 55 percent from the floor in the first half, raced to a 52-22 halftime lead, and were led by the early inside scoring of Lockett. Overall, she shot eight for 10 from the field, and finished with 21 points and 13 rebounds.

“I felt really good about the game tonight,” Lockett said. “I was really happy about my shooting percentage. I’m gaining confidence in myself.”

Albright is gaining confidence in Lockett as well. Albright said the team is now making a conscious effort to look for her to score inside.

“She’s strong, explosive, and she doesn’t mind getting the rebound,” Albright said. “We have learned to respect that she can score now, and I think at the beginning of the last two games you’ve seen us look to get the ball inside (to her).”

Not to be outdone by Lockett’s heroism was the play of Huskies’ guard Lisa Foss. Rebounding nicely from a subpar performance last Thursday, Foss scored 25 points.

“I shot a lot better,” Foss said. “We had fun tonight. We all came in and played hard.”

The Huskies were without the aid of flu-stricken starting point guard Denise Dove, but they compensated by switching senior Toby Meeks to Dove’s position. Meeks responded by making a game-high eight assists.

“I think Toby Meeks did a great job of running the ball team,” Albright said. “She really looked like she’d been doing nothing but that for the four years of her college career.”

Defensively, the Huskies were just as imposing as their offense. NIU outrebounded UW-M 64-40, and held the Panthers to a 29 percent field-goal shooting percentage.

“I think Northern Illinois is a great team,” UW-M head coach M. A. Kelling said. “It was really nice watching them except I didn’t like sitting on the opponents’ bench. It’s an experience to play against Northern. They’re just a really great team.”