CEDAR FALLS - The vital signs of the Northern Iowa volleyball squad have been all over the charts this season.

They spiked upward with an early-season sweep of a strong American squad. Then, the Panthers' prognosis took an ugly turn for the worse, with a four-match losing skid earlier this month.

Saturday, the Panthers' status stabilized, as they returned to form and brushed Bradley aside, sweeping the Braves, 30-23, 30-20, 30-19 in a Missouri Valley Conference match at the McLeod Center.

The Braves, who UNI has now beaten on 18 straight occasions in Cedar Falls, proved to be the cure for what ailed the Panthers, as the hosts stepped lively all night.

"We've tried to look at why we've been up and down," noted seventh-year UNI coach Bobbi Petersen. "There's just been some matches where we haven't been able to finish.

"But it's time to turn the corner. It's time to get over that hump."

Kristin Belzung paced the Panthers with a match-high 40 assists Saturday, while front-row performers Laura Rowen, Danielle Brazda and Amy Sampson combined to record 33 total kills. With its triumph, UNI evened its overall mark at 8-8 overall, while improving to 3-2 in MVC action.

No UNI volleyball squad has ever lost three of its first five MVC matches. The 2007 edition of Panthers wanted no part of that dubious distinction.

They played like it Saturday.

In a match of surges, Bradley could never stem the UNI tide.

Looking like the squad most pundits envisioned when they voted UNI as the league's preseason favorite, the Panthers attacked with full force in game one, reeling off a 12-4 run to claw out a victory. Sampson, fresh off a career-high 19 kills Sept. 25 at St. Louis, hammered six game-one kills, including a hard, cross-court spike that punctuated the Panthers' win in the opener.

UNI is now 8-2 in matches this season when winning the first game.

Bradley (1-15 overall), which had been battered in nine straight matches upon arrival in Cedar Falls, couldn't quite match UNI's intensity up front. That was apparent in the second game, when Ashten Stelken triggered a late, 9-3 run to help the hosts handle the Braves.

"That's always been our strength. We look to the front-court," said Petersen, "to be the ones that start the spark and get the crowd into it."

Brazda provided the gathering with a jolt of adrenaline with her 11 kills. She is just 11 shy of becoming the 17th Panther in school annals to reach the 1,000-career kill mark.

And Rowen prodded the crowd of 1,386 to rise to its feet in the finale, as she hammered home a kill to the back row at match point. You could almost hear the entire Panther roster audibly exhale at that point, as they inched back to .500 for the year.

Now, will UNI continue to climb, or plummet back to the nearly unparalelled depths endured earlier this season?

"(We were) using tonight's match as kind of the start to the second half of the season," said Petersen, whose Panthers venture to Indiana State on Friday night. "Obviously, we wanted to start that off with a win, and I'm so glad we were able to do that."

Contact Kelly Beaton at (319) 291-1456 or kelly.beaton@wcfcourier.com