After being honored before Tuesday’s home match, Tera Lobdell showed why she is NIU’s all-time kills leader on the court as the Huskies swept Chicago State.

Three days after breaking Amber Howard’s career kills record, the senior outside hitter was given a standing ovation and a game ball commemorating the new record. She proceeded to turn in a flawless performance with 19 kills and no errors for the match.

“Tera hit the ball really well,” NIU coach Ray Gooden said. “Having no errors in a match for an outside hitter is great. Tonight was definitely her night.”

A rowdy home crowd of 211 people and solid blocking helped the Huskies roll to a 30-14 first game win while keeping the Cougars to a -.062 hitting percentage.

NIU kept Chicago State on the defensive the entire match as the Huskies mixed up their offense with a variety of sets to hitters other than Lobdell.

Sophomore middle blocker Kate McCullagh put away 10 kills and junior middle blocker Corinne Walsh also contributed seven kills on 14 attempts for the match.

“It was definitely the game plan to spread it around,” junior setter Marie Zidek said. “We’ve done drills in practice where we have to use hitters other than Tera [Lobdell] and Kate [McCullagh] to score. That helped us out to take pressure off Tera and Kate, and it kept their defense on its toes.”

Instead of hammering the ball into the block the entire night, the Huskies focused on ball placement in the middle. That is how NIU scored a majority of its points as the Cougars were playing deep in their coverage.

“I think we mixed up our offense a little more,” Lobdell said. “They were focusing on Kate and I, and it left people open. They were back playing defense waiting for a dig and the middle was wide open all night.”

Chicago State tightened its defense in game two with 27 digs, but the Huskies did one better in the digs category and found ways to score on second chance and transition opportunities.

“Chicago State ran down the ball and dug it back a lot,” Gooden said. “But then we’d get it back on offense and ram it down their throats. It was awesome. We didn’t get frustrated and we made positive plays even though we got dug a lot.”

After taking the second game 30-23, the Huskies gave up a four-point rally late in game three to knot the score at 24. But NIU did not fold and came back with six straight points of its own to finish the sweep.

“We relaxed a little bit in the third game,” Gooden said. “We’re still trying to get that killer instinct to finish teams off. But we did a good job of that [Tuesday].”