Toledo, OHIO — There was no use of the phrase “moral victory” after the NIU football team’s 41-20 loss to Toledo.

In fact, the phrase has been erased from the Huskies’ vocabulary.

There will be no more “moral victories” for the Huskies. They are sick of getting close to pulling out a win and falling short. They do not just want to compete with the upper echelon of the Mid-American Conference.

They want to win.

The only problem is: When?

Junior tailback Thomas Hammock, who erased moral victory from his memory bank after the Huskies’ 17-12 loss to Illinois, doesn’t know when it will happen, but has an idea on how to change things.

“We just have to come in with the mind-frame that we can win these types of ball games and not just trying to compete,” Hammock said.

And as much as quarterback Chris Finlen hates moral victories, there was something he was happy about from the Toledo game.

“It was good to see that we were able to come back and continue to play,” said the senior, who was hoping to pull out a win against Toledo in his final chance in his career. But the Huskies need to do that for a full 60 minutes of the game.

In the first four games of the season, the Huskies have managed to

score only 30 points in the first half. They have doubled that output in the second half, scoring 63 points. In the Illini game, the Huskies fell behind 17-6 in the fourth quarter, but managed to score a touchdown in the last minutes of the game, breathing new life into the Huskies.

“We seem to get ourselves stuck behind the eight-ball so early in the game,” Finlen said. “When we come into the locker room at halftime, we have to make adjustments and realize that we have to play better. We can’t be doing that, especially against teams like Toledo and Marshall next weekend.”

And as much as P.J. Fleck doesn’t think this loss was a learning experience, there was a lesson to be taught: a win over the upper echelon of the MAC is coming, and it will be soon.

Since returning to the MAC in 1997, NIU is now 0-10 against the MAC’s top teams — 0-5 against Toledo, 0-4 against Western Michigan, and 0-1 against Marshall.

A win against one of these teams is due soon. The Huskies just hope it will be next weekend against Marshall, and they know it could very well be their weekend to finally get over that hump.