With nine matches played over two grueling days, the stage was set Saturday night for a slugfest between two heavy hitters for the Comfort Inn and Suites Invitational championship game.

The tournament-host NIU Huskies and leading scorer Kate McCullagh faced-off against the undefeated Illinois Fighting Illini and star performer Rachel VanMeter in the hardest-hitting match of the weekend.

In front of a bipartisan crowd of 318, McCullagh garnered a match-high 24 kills, but the Huskies could not stop the Illini’s potent offense in a 30-26, 30-24, 30-26 defeat.

“I think it’s good to see that the stuff we’ve been working on, Illinois does on a regular basis,” NIU coach Ray Gooden said. “They’re able to execute the first time through. The thing we can also take from it is we can put ourselves in spots to score and, unfortunately, we just didn’t do that enough.”

The Huskies (4-2) finished the weekend with a 3-1 record at the annual five-team tournament at Victor E. Court.

NIU opened Friday afternoon by shutting down the Austin Peay State offense, limiting APSU (2-4) to a .080 hitting percentage over the course of a 30-21, 30-22, 28-30, 30-20 victory. McCullagh, a junior middle blocker, scored 20 kills while sophomore outside hitter Laura Baetzel added 13.

The nightcap match proved more difficult as Wisconsin-Green Bay (2-3) used a balanced offense and four players with double-digit kills to take a 2-1 game advantage. But the Huskies stormed back with a 30-24 win in Game 4 and then ended the suspense with a hard-fought 15-12 win in Game 5. McCullagh later addressed NIU’s jittery tendencies late in games.

“We just need to calm down and chill out,” the Woodstock native said. “We get stressed out and stress each other out sometimes. We just need to find the source of the problem and fix it right away before it gets bigger.”

McCullagh again spearheaded the Huskie offense with a career-high 33 kills against an overmatched Indiana State (0-5) squad. While the Sycamores scored a 30-28 win in Game 2, the Huskies roared back and hit .341 in Game 4 to close the match 30-26.

In the championship match, the Illini (5-0) used their significant height advantages to hit .355 for the match. While both teams tallied six team blocks, the 6-foot-3-inch VanMeter scored almost at will with 23 kills and a .419 hitting percentage. Freshman middle blocker Joelle Beisel added six kills on 10 attempts as the Huskies were outscored 56 to 45 in the kills department.

Freshman setter Jenny Dziubla, who guided the NIU offense with 190 assists over the four matches, said the young team is feeling more at home in DeKalb with experience.

“I am feeling more comfortable at home,” Dziubla said. “You can tell a lot too by the way we play and we’re relaxing more and I think we are doing a good job. Everyone is patient with each other so it’s working well.”

The All-Tournament team featured McCullagh and junior libero Gina Guide from NIU. They were joined by APSU’s Ashley Genslak, UWGB’s Jackie Rosen and Illinois’ Beth Vrdsky. VanMeter was voted Most Valuable Player of the invitational.

The Huskies’ next match is 7 p.m. tonight at Western Illinois in Macomb.