When asked what the difference was between Wednesday’s loss to Ball State and Saturday’s win against Central Michigan, the NIU volleyball team unanimously said it was the way the Huskies passed the ball.

The Huskies defeated CMU in four games 30-27, 24-30, 30-28, 30-26 and evened their conference record at 1-1. Overall NIU sits at 8-5.

Middle blocker Rena Widboom compiled a career-high 22 kills on 41 attempts and attributed her success to passing.

“Passing is key for any offense,” Rena Widboom said. “I’m in a rotation with three hitters. When you have three options they don’t know who to block. Plus [Jenny] Rohren and I were connecting a little bit better than usual.”

Fellow middle blocker Jen VonderHaar had 16 kills and a .500 hitting percentage. The duo of middle blockers made up for the poor play of outside hitters Tera Lobdell and Tenisha Wilkins.

Lobdell had nine kills while hitting only .190. Wilkins added 10 kills and hit .100.

“It’s not intentional to just set the middles unless we’re trying to work on something,” Widboom said. “We try and keep it spread out and balanced, keep everyone hitting, keep the other side guessing. But then again if someone’s hot, keep setting them.”

The Huskies also cut their errors from 59 on Wednesday to 46 on Saturday. The main facet the Huskies improved on was ball handling errors, where they had only two compared to the 11 against BSU.

“That pretty much seems to be the difference between Wednesday and tonight,” NIU coach Ray Gooden said. “I still think error-wise we’re still hovering around some of those numbers, but it’s better. We got rid of some of our big runs.”

Playing inconsistent once again almost cost the Huskies a game. NIU had a 29-22 lead and was trying to end game 3. However, CMU rallied back to make it 29-28 before Widboom ended the game with a kill.

“It’s the same thing that’s been happening to us all year,” Gooden said. “We kind of just lose our focus on what we’re trying to do and we end up giving a bunch of points in runs.”

Freshman Marie Zidek filled her role of coming off the bench to serve nicely with three service aces. She is tied for the team lead with Amanda Newlin with 16. Newlin added two of her own on Saturday.

Junior Melissa Benson led the team in digs with 18. Wilkins added 11.

Game one saw both teams hit at a stellar pace. While NIU hit an astounding .394, CMU hit an even better .410. However, NIU came away with the game and match.

“Everybody was trying to step up tonight,” Gooden said. “Everybody was really trying to not let Wednesday night come back. Tonight we had to scrap with a team that’s very scrappy. That’s a good thing for us.”