The NIU volleyball team will begin the MAC quarterfinals tonight after a first-round win against Akron on Victor E. Court Tuesday night.

The No. 8-seeded Huskies will play against the top seed, No. 21 Ohio at 6:30 p.m. in Toledo, Ohio.

“I feel really good about the match,” junior middle blocker Kate McCullagh said. “It’s going to be tough, but we’re going to play our best volleyball match of the whole year.”

The Huskies played against the Bobcats at the Convocation Center earlier this season. The match was bittersweet for the Huskies as they won game one and ended Ohio’s 33-game winning streak. The Bobcats went on to win the match 3-1.

“We played really good volleyball [in game one],” NIU coach Ray Gooden said. “We scored point for point with Ohio, and took advantage of every opportunity they gave us.”

NIU outplayed Ohio in game one by posting a .485 attacking percentage while holding Ohio to a .293 attacking percentage.

The next three games were not as kind to the Huskies as they dropped their average attacking percentage to .008 while the Bobcats increased their average to .336.

“When we played them last time we started to break down later in the games,” McCullagh said. “Consistency is the key – we want to force them to make the errors.”

McCullagh believes the Bobcats underestimated the Huskies during the first game.

Although NIU handed Ohio a loss, the 6-foot middle blocker doesn’t believe the Bobcats haven’t learned their lesson.

“They’re still going to underestimate us,” the Woodstock native said. “We have to go out there with everything, and if they don’t underestimate us we just have to play consistent volleyball.”

The circumstances surrounding the first match between NIU and Ohio and tonight’s are very different.

When the Huskies played Ohio Oct. 22, NIU had just begun a five-match conference slide the night before against Kent State.

Since that meeting, the Huskies have won their last four matches and are in the midst of their longest winning streak of the season.

“There’s a greater understanding now of how important it is to come out as one unit to be successful,” the fourth-year coach said. “Everyone has to bring the belief that they can play the best for the team. When we do that as a group we’re hard to beat.”

The Huskies have the mighty task of facing the best team in the MAC, but fighting for success is nothing new to the team.

After their five-match conference slide, the Huskies pulled themselves together to finish the regular season with three straight wins to secure the No. 8 seed and a first-round home match in the conference tournament.

“It’s exciting to be in the tournament in general, and if that means the team we play is Ohio, then it’s Ohio,” Gooden said. “We just have to play them and keep our focus on our goal – and that’s playing on Sunday.”