Two wins and two losses for the NIU softball team at the University of Missouri Mizzou Round Robin over the weekend leave the Huskies’ No. 9 national ranking in jeopardy when the new rankings come out Tuesday.

Both losses came against Oklahoma—a 6-5 decision on Saturday and a 6-2 downing on Sunday. However, the Huskies evened things out by taking two games from host Missouri.

With the weekend split, NIU moves its record to 26-7 for the season.

The Huskies went into the final game of the tournament 1-2, and needed to knock off Missouri to capture a split—and the 2-1 win didn’t come easy.

NIU scored a run in the first and maintained the 1-0 lead until a Mizzou home run tied it up in the fifth inning. However, a key defensive play for NIU came in the bottom of the fourth.

With a runner on third, a Mizzou batter drilled a shot to center that Jill Justin made an over-the-shoulder catch on. Justin quickly turned and gunned the ball to the plate, where catcher Julie Sexton tagged out the runner.

In the NIU half of the sixth, with Ree Zenner on second base, Jenny Blasky singled to score Zenner and give the Huskies their final run.

Kristin Vandenhouten (6-1) started the game for NIU, but it was Beth Schrader who came on in relief to pick up the win. Schrader’s record moves to 15-3 with one of the Oklahoma losses to her credit.

In Sunday’s 6-2 loss to Oklahoma, leaving runners stranded on the bases was NIU’s downfall.

“We really didn’t get blown out,” said Huskie head coach Dee Abrahamson. “We had a lot of scoring opportunities, but we just couldn’t get runs when we needed them. We had a lot of people on base and we had a lot of hits, but we didn’t execute.”

The Huskies stranded 11 runners in their two-run performance.

On a positive note, All-America Jill Justin went 3-for-3 with a single, a double and triple. She also walked once, but failed to score once in four times on base.

NIU’s next game is scheduled for Wednesday at Illinois-Chicago.