After two players went down to injury, the NIU women’s volleyball team went 0-3 this weekend at the Duke Invitational.

Senior Megan Markowski (pain in her foot) and freshman Laura Baetzel (tendinitis in her shoulder) did not play either match of a doubleheader Saturday after losing to Townson University (3-1) on Friday night.

In the first match of the Invitational, NIU (2-6) took Townson to five games behind 24 kills and a career-high 17 digs by Tera Lobdell, but the Huskies could not get past 11 serving errors as they lost 31-29, 26-30, 30-22, 27-30, 13-15.

“We just committed way too many errors,” NIU coach Ray Gooden said. “We kept digging ourselves holes that we had to crawl out of.”

NIU tried to rebound the next afternoon against the University of South Carolina (4-2), but without Markowski and Baetzel.

“Megan hurt her foot sometime in practice, but we didn’t think anything of it until she said it hurt during the tournament,” Baetzel said. “And my shoulder started hurting a couple days before we left for Duke.”

Baetzel said she was uncertain of how long Markowski would be out and didn’t know how long she would be out.

Despite the loss of two starters to its nine-player roster, the Huskies took South Carolina to four games with strong defensive play as five Huskies had 10 or more digs, but the missing starters proved too much as they fell 28-30, 27-30, 30-22, 21-30.

Corinne Walsh and Kate McCullagh had 13 kills apiece with Lobdell leading the way with 25 kills.

NIU then took on Duke (6-2) to end the weekend. Lobdell put up her third 20-plus kill performance of the weekend with 21, but NIU lost 19-30, 21-30, 21-30.

“We’re just hurt right now,” Gooden said. “We had people out of their normal spots that were really trying to give their best efforts.”

Despite the 0-3 record, Lobdell still made the all-tournament team.

NIU will have a week to get healthy as its next game is not until Friday at the University of Northern Iowa Invitational.