The Illinois volleyball team continued its inconsistency Wednesday, losing in three sets to No. 11 Nebraska after beating No. 15 Wisconsin in four sets Sunday. Illinois hasn’t strung two wins together this season, but that hasn’t seemed to discourage the team that has felt like it’s been playing well despite the record.

“We’ve had great sets against every team except for I think Michigan State and (the first match against) Nebraska, where we didn’t feel like we had any sets where we were in contention,” head coach Kevin Hambly said. “Every other match we feel like we’ve had a chance to win. We haven’t been able to close. We’ve been inconsistent with closing. It was nice to see us do that against Wisconsin.”

Illinois has split the first five weeks of conference play, winning against some of the best competition in the country but not being able to put everything together on a consistent basis.

“We’ve definitely been inconsistent, so that’s been hard, but we have seen better things out of every game,” junior outside hitter Liz McMahon said at practice Tuesday. “It’s just a matter of getting the wins now. With the exception of a few, we’re pretty confident about how we’ve played in games and we know that we can beat teams this time around.”

Through 21 games this year the Illini are 9-12 overall and 5-6 in the Big Ten, which is one win lower than where the team was at this point last season. Illinois came up one win short of an NCAA tournament berth last year, a fact that has motivated the team to fix its inconsistencies and try to become better in big moments.

“I think coming off of last year, we didn’t necessarily know how to win in certain games,” McMahon said. “We knew how to play well, but we never knew what that extra piece was to win the game. I think we’re starting to figure that out. We knew how to lose, but now we’re figuring out what we need to do to win.”

Illinois will try to get back to .500 in Big Ten play Saturday at Iowa against a Hawkeyes team that has gone 1-9 in conference play this year. Sophomore setter Alexis Viliunas said Tuesday she thinks Illinois will respond with more consistent play in the second half of its Big Ten schedule after not having the best first half.

“It hasn’t gone the way we’ve wanted it to,” Viliunas said. “We’re looking to go up from here. Since we’ve played all these teams once we know what to expect, and we’re a totally different team than we were at the beginning of Big Tens.”

Illinois will need to win six of its final nine games to make it to .500 and be eligible for the NCAA tournament, and to do so, the Illini know they need to become a more consistent team.

“We just gotta keep fighting and keep working through getting ourselves in tough situations and trying to change the outcome,” Viliunas said. “We’ve been in situations where we’ve been up a few points and then lost, so hopefully we can get ourselves back in those situations and up those few points and able to pull it out.”

Nicholas can be reached at [email protected] and @IlliniSportsGuy.