On the surface, Friday’s home match against Marshall was just one of many mid-season conference contests for the NIU volleyball team. But the subplot for the evening involved the two premier offensive players in the MAC facing each other for the first time.

NIU senior outside hitter Tera Lobdell and Marshall freshman outside hitter Kelly-Anne Billingy are both focal points of their respective team’s offense. Lobdell entered the match ranked No. 7 in the nation and leading the conference in kills per game with 5.63, with Billingy right behind her at No. 8.

“We knew [Billingy] was going to get her kills,” NIU coach Ray Gooden said. “We had the potential to slow her down. It was our goal to contain her as best as we could. Both Kelly-Anne and Tera are leaders in kills, so she’s going to get set a lot and make plays happen.”

As the match began, the contrast in styles was immediate. Lobdell concentrated on scoring from the left-outside angles as well as accumulating kills from the backcourt. Billingy, instead, used her 6-foot-3 frame to blast the ball through the Huskies blockers.

“You can always guess about how a player’s going to play, but you don’t really know until the game starts,” said NIU senior middle blocker Megan Markowski. “She was pretty consistent with how we thought she was going to play. She hit around our block and around our defense. There’s nothing we could do about that. We prepared as best as we could.”

Statistically, Billingy finished slightly ahead with 30 kills and a .297 hitting percentage compared to Lobdell’s 26 kills and .192 hitting percentage. But with the match on the line, Billingy’s five kills in the deciding fifth game helped Marshall rally back to take the win 18-16.

“You’d like to think she wouldn’t make that much of a difference,” said NIU middle blocker Kate McCullagh. “But in that case she made a huge difference. They knew in tight situations they could set her the ball and she would put it down.”

Although the Huskies came out on the losing end, Lobdell saw the positives of having high-profile scorers from the MAC.

“I think any kind of notoriety for the conference is good in general,” Lobdell said. “whether it is one player, two players or a whole team. It’s going to help the MAC get recognized.”