NIU football coach Jerry Pettibone told a small gathering at the weekly coaches luncheon Thursday that while the Huskies have suffered a stage of “emotional dropoff”, the squad is on its way back up.

Despite a two-game losing streak, (losses to Toledo, 33-20, and Southwestern Louisiana, 45-0) Pettibone said he “feels good about where we (the team) are right now.”

“When you ask a team to play that hard and that intense for so many weeks,” Pettibone said, “you’re going to have an emotional dropoff. It happens in the pros too.

“(The players’) attitudes have not changed and their hard work at practice hasn’t changed. This game (against Southern Illinois Saturday), we’re going back up again.”

Following the replay highlights (and lowlights) of the USL game, Recruiting Coordinator Russ Graham gave the scouting report on the Salukis, who began running the wishbone offense this year. While both NIU and SIU share the ‘bone, the Salukis haven’t acquired a taste for anything fancy.

“They’re a little bit more vanilla than we are,” Graham said. “We have more variety in our wishbone. We have better people (players) than SIU does, and we recruited those people.”

NIU volleyball coach Pete Waite, spoke about his team’s 9-8 record and his top player, and luncheon guest, Cathy Holmes.

Senior co-captain Holmes, who has been named North Star Conference player-of-the-week for three of the last six weeks, is ranked sixth in the nation in hitting and blocking.