For NIU women’s basketball coach Carol Hammerle, one half of good basketball isn’t enough.

The Huskies blew a seven-point lead and were outscored by 20 in the second half of Saturday’s loss to Marshall, which caused concern for the seventh-year coach.

“Obviously, we need to sustain our play for both halves of the game,” Hammerle said. “[Marshall] turned up the heat in the second half and it got tough on us.”

The Huskies will get a chance to bounce back from their first conference loss of the season at 6 p.m. today at Ball State, which recently has turned it up a notch in the second half of its games.

The Cardinals (6-9 overall, 2-2 MAC) have outscored their opponents by an average of 9.7 points in the second half of their last three games.

NIU (5-9, 2-1) must find a way to contain senior forward Kate Endress, who is the MAC’s third leading scorer at 16.7 points per game.

“Our defense really needs to buckle down, and we worked on beating pressure in practice,” sophomore center Kristin Wiener said. “Anyone can press us like Marshall did if they get a hold of that game tape.”

With the loss of freshman guard Tara Michels due to a knee injury, the Huskies’ rotation has been shortened.

Wiener, along with the other four NIU starters, played at least 30 minutes against Marshall, and Hammerle doesn’t see a change anytime soon.

“Rotation has hurt us so I am giving playing time based on performance,” Hammerle said. “Our starters have been playing a lot of minutes.”