Only needing two points to win the match against an undefeated conference opponent, the NIU volleyball team was left with a bittersweet taste in its mouth.

“Personally, when we started, I didn’t know they were undefeated,” middle blocker Rena Widboom said. “We have to get it done on our side. We don’t worry about who is on the other side of the net.”

For the second time this year, the Huskies came up short in the fifth game and the match as they lost 30-28, 30-26, 29-31, 23-30 and 5-15 on Saturday night against Akron.

The Huskies showed the crowd of nearly 300 people glimpses of their potential as they cruised to a two games to none lead.

“The first two games we did everything pretty well,” Widboom said. “We blocked well the first two games, the liberos nailed every pass. Everything was gelling.”

Trailing 27-24 late in the first game, NIU ran off five consecutive points to help take the first game 30-28.

Winning that first game gave the Huskies momentum as they rattled off the first five points of the next game. NIU never was behind in the second game.

In the first two games, NIU had a hitting percentage 70 points higher than the Zips.

With the Huskies down 29-25 in the third game, they were able to scratch their way back to a 29-29 tie, but Akron rebounded with a kill and NIU ended its chances of winning on the next play on an attacking error.

“There were some things tonight that just clicked and we were doing some things really well,” coach Ray Gooden said. “Akron is relentless on defense and in order to beat them, you have to win all the rallies. We did that in the first two games and at the end of game three. But we lost our focus in the last two games and we fell apart.”

NIU wasn’t able to get back on track from the loss in the third game. In the fourth game, the Zips started the game with a 13-5 run and the Huskies weren’t able to get any closer than three points the rest of the game.

The fifth game was disastrous for NIU as they went down 12-0 to start the game. The Huskies’ first point came from a kill by Tera Lobdell.

For Lobdell, who had 10 kills, it was her seventh straight match of double digit kills. She also had a career-high 24 digs.

Outside hitter Tenisha Wilkins had 20 kills and 17 digs in the loss for the Huskies.

Jen VonderHaar returned for the first time in three matches and chipped in with 15 kills and had a .300 hitting percentage.

“We were really good in the beginning, we played some good volleyball games,” Gooden said. “That is the whole idea about playing against a good team, you want to play good volleyball against good volleyball teams.”