DeKALB, Ill. – The Northern Illinois University volleyball team (9-3,2-0 MAC) won its sixth-straight match as the Huskies completed its second sweep (25-20, 25-20, 25-18) over Akron (3-10,0-2 MAC) Saturday afternoon at Victor E. Court. NIU, who's swept its past three opponents, is tied for first place in the Mid-American Conference West division.

"When we play these series, we make sure that we keep our focus and play at a high-level. It's really important and I thought our group did a really nice job with that tonight," said head volleyball coach Ray Gooden. "Akron played more consistent volleyball, but I also thought that we played more consistent volleyball at times too,"

How it Happened: The Huskies had a 14-9 lead midway through the first frame after a 7-2 run. Two kills from Charli Atiemo (Milford, Mich./Farmington Hills Mercy) and a kill from Katie Jablonski (Elburn, Ill./Kaneland) gave NIU a quick 3-0 run, putting the Huskies up 19-12. NIU went up 1-0 in the match after Emily Dykes (Winterville, N.C./Ayden-Grifton) logged the set-winner from Ella Mihacevich (Brunswick, Ohio/Padua Franciscan).

Both squads played competitive volleyball in the second set. In fact, the set was knotted up at 16-16 before NIU exploded on a 6-1 run to go up 22-17. The Huskies were awarded its final two points of the second frame after the Zips committed a service and attacking error. With a 2-0 advantage in the match, the two teams headed into the final frame.  

Sammi Lockwood (Cary, Ill./Prairie Ridge) registered NIU's first kill of the third set from Mihacevich to open scoring. Then, a 5-0 run from the Huskies put them up 7-3 after Atiemo spiked down a kill from Francesca Bertucci (Chicago, Ill./De La Salle). NIU forced two Akron attacking errors to end the match and win its 11^th-straight set.     

"I thought our service was really good. I thought that the team handled the ball really well on first contact. I think our defense helped later on - we were uncharacteristically higher with our serves, but as we became more consistent with our serving, our defense picked up, our blocking picked up and then our overall team play picked,"

Notables: NIU had 10 more kills than the Zips (47-37) and double the blocks (10-5) in the win. Atiemo posted 12 kills while Lockwood and Scuric had eight apiece. Lockwood and Atiemo posted five blocks each while Dykes had a trio of her own. Mihacevich logged 35 assists and Bertucci had 17 digs to lead NIU.

Up Next: The Huskies continue its home stand Tuesday night when Western Michigan comes to Victor E. Court. First serve is set for 6 p.m. while the match will broadcast live on ESPN+.

"We're going to play [Western Michigan] Tuesday, then we're going to play Buffalo Friday, which is our longest trip. We'll play again Saturday. So our team's going to have to really rely on their training to work through these next few days to be successful."