By Ari Srait

The Northeastern University women’s volleyball team experienced a complete reversal of fortunes last weekend, easily taking all three matches in the New England Challenge and increasing their current winning streak to four. The tourney came on the heels of a West Coast Swing in which the Huskies started their season 1-5. Coach Ken Nichols said the step up in competition would help them out down the line. Looks like he was serious. The New England Challenge host Huskies are now 4-5, as their consecutive defeats of Colgate University, Towson University and Furman University came right on the heels of their victory against Creighton University to close out the Loyola Marymount Invitational two weekends ago. In the 3-0 sweep of the now 0-10 Colgate University Raiders, the Huskies hit a remarkable .359 in the first game and an even more impressive .438 in the second. The team finished with 52 kills and 16 errors on 109 attempts for a fantastic .330 team hitting percentage. Assistant coach Sylvie Quenneville attributed this surge in accuracy to finally playing familiar opponents in familiar settings. “They were fired up to be playing at home,” she said. “Everyone was ready to play. You could feel the energy during warm-ups. ” Senior setter Kristin Ursillo successfully directed the pinpoint Husky offense, with 40 assists in the three games. Sophomore Larissa Adomat, finishing with 13 kills and only one error in 18 attacks, totaled a phenomenal .667 hitting percentage, and middler Jana Kubalova was right behind her with 10 kills of her own. Defensively, a team effort combined to perform in a manner only recently displayed by the nationally ranked West Coast teams, with 20 assisted blocks compared to the Raiders’ team total of five. Quenneville believes the difference was due to the Huskies’ more complex style of play, and, of course, a little home-court advantage. “We run a much more complicated offense than Colgate does,” she said. “They run what we call a straight up offense, and they’re not used to seeing plays like ours. “The girls got really excited,” she added. “It’s a good adrenaline rush to play in front of their fans and their family members. It just feels a lot more comfortable when you’re home.” The second game of the tournament was played the next day, against the former America East participants Towson University Tigers. The Tigers, who entered the match 4-3, suffered their only loss of the tournament at the hands of the Huskies. The 3-1 victory was exactly the same result as the last time these two teams met, in November of 2001. While the Tigers actually put up higher totals in kills, assists, digs and blocks, they also tripled the Huskies’ serving errors, and had less than a fourth as many aces. Quenneville was quick to point out the importance of the serving game. “They gave us 16 points and only had three aces,” she said, “While we did the opposite. That was a big turn in the match. They had to be thinking about it when they played us. Sometimes its a big block or a missed serve that can change the whole thing around.” Ursillo once again played a significant role in this match, not only in notching 47 assists in the four games, but also tallying five aces, two more than the Tigers’ entire team. Three more came from senior hitter Shannon Brooker, and five additional individual contributions gave the Huskies a total of 13 on the day, just two less than they had in their entire season-opening West Coast road trip. It was somewhat of a roller coaster of a match, as the Huskies won the first game by four points, dropped the second by the same amount, took the third by five, and then were actually down 31-30 in the fourth before scoring the next three points to walk away with the win. “I thought we played really well,” Quenneville said.”We knew what to expect. They’re the same players from when they were in our conference, just a little older. They were all freshman two years ago. You could see the girls recognize each other, and then get that desire to win.” After a couple of hours to rest, the team came back onto the court to play the Paladins from Furman University. Furman had won a five-game match against Harvard earlier in the day, and were put away rather easily by the Huskies in four games to end the tournament. A dominating 30-13 victory in game one was followed by a 30-28 loss in game two, only to be almost replicated in a 30-15 win in game three. The Huskies then took game four 30-24 to close out the weekend. “Furman’s serve receive errors really hurt them,” Quenneville said. “They had 14 receive errors and we had two. They were never in system, and couldn’t set up their middles. That’s what made the big difference there.” Adomat and Kubalova were once again the main Husky hitters, with 14 kills and 13 kills respectively. Ursillo contributed 41 assists and three more aces, and the team once again more than doubled their counterpart’s team hitting percentage, finishing with a .328 mark to the Paladins’ .135. “Kristin and Larissa were definitely our two best attackers last year,” Quenneville said. “Jana is a great surprise. She’s very talented. This year she’s consistent. She worked hard in the spring, worked hard in the summer and we hope she’s gonna be there for us all year.” The team will ride the winning streak into the Pittsburgh Invitational, a three-game tournament to be played this upcoming Friday and Saturday against Texas Christian University, host University of Pittsburgh and University of Toledo. According to Quenneville, the team is exactly where they want to be right now. “We knew California was going to be tough competition,” she said. “We needed to find out who was gonna step up and play so we can find the best lineup. This past weekend showed what we can do. The team you saw this weekend is the team you’ll see the rest of the year.”