Nearly a month after losing to Ball State in straight games, the NIU volleyball team beat the Cardinals in four games.

The Huskies lost to BSU on Sept. 26 at Worthern Arena. It was Ball State’s 56th straight win at home against MAC opponents.

This time, NIU had a chance to defend its home floor and did, beating the Cardinals 23-30, 30-17, 30-27 and 30-28 on Friday night.

“When we played at Ball State, we played very tentative,” NIU coach Ray Gooden said. “They had all the momentum there.”

In the first meeting of the season between the two teams, NIU committed 44 errors – 15 more errors than Ball State. At home, the Huskies had 37, while BSU finished with 45.

NIU had a season-low .034 hitting percentage in its loss at Worthern Arena. They were able to improve on that at Victor E. Court as they hit .200.

Brooke Dodson, Tera Lobdell and Kate McCullagh all had double digit kills on Friday. In the first meeting, Lobdell was the NIU player who finished in double-digit kills.

“I think the big difference was us being psyched out the first time we played,” sophomore setter Marie Zidek said. “We tried to worry about so many things and being perfect. Obviously tonight, you could see that it wasn’t the case; we weren’t perfect all the time. Everybody stepped up and helped out. We played very well.”

Playing at home with 359 fans also helped the Huskies, who lost five of their last six matches before Friday’s victory.

“The crowd was huge,” Zidek said. “They were really loud and that kind of quieted Ball State down a lot. They were a very talkative team and the crowd kind of shut them up.”