Judging from which one of this weekend’s games you looked at; the NIU women’s soccer team may have been outstanding on defense or plain dreadful.

On Friday, the Huskies kicked off their weekend on a winning note, thanks to a fortunate bounce against Akron. In the 60th minute, a free kick from midfield by freshman Courtney Ksiazek bounced over the Zips goalkeeper to give NIU a 1-0 advantage. After the Ksiazek marker, NIU goalkeeper Amy Carr stood strong to notch the sixth shutout of her freshman campaign.

Akron (3-9-0 overall, 1-4-0 MAC) head coach Chris Pfau had few words after watching his team play hard for 90 minutes only to come up short.

“This game was an example of our season so far,” Pfau said. “Did some nice things, missed some chances and then a fluke goal beats us.”

On the other side of the coin, NIU head coach Carrie Barker continued to preach team defense as the reasoning behind tightly contested wins.

“Early on in the year we were developing as a team on defense,” Barker said. “Now, we’re playing well on defense, and we are consistently giving ourselves a chance to win.”

As good as the Huskies were defensively on Friday is how bad they were on Sunday against Ohio. Giving up three goals in a wild 3-2 affair, the Huskies found themselves behind early and often against the Bobcats (5-5-3, 2-2-2).

After surrendering the opening goal in the seventh minute, NIU (7-5-1, 3-2-1) answered back with a Megan Harry marker 13 minutes later. Ten minutes following the Harry goal though, the Bobcats piled on with two Rachael Philpot goals over the span of one minute.

Just as Barker gives her defense credit after a win, she will be straight forward about the unit after a loss.

“As a team we just did not play well today,” Barker said. “We didn’t have any of our defensive matchups and that will always lead to problems for your team.”

While Harry conceded the poor defensive play, the senior midfielder thought the loss had more to do with a lack of a strong mindset.

“On Friday, we were ready to go right from the first whistle,” Harry said. “Today though, we came out a little slow and I thought we got a little better as the game went on, but it wasn’t enough.”