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The key to winning for the Wisconsin volleyball hangs from a new banner in the Field House. “Play with heart,” it reads.

“It stands for hunger, execution, accountability, respect and teamwork,” senior captain Audra Jeffers said. “That is what we try to play with every day. We need to play like this every practice and in games.”

Cutting down the unforced errors will help, too.

“That is something we have been working on in practice,” Jeffers said. “The coaches are really good at designing drills to help with that. … It all comes in with practice and being mentally tough. I think a lot of the errors have come from not being aggressive. If you go up there tentatively and don’t take an aggressive swing at the ball, then that is when you hit it out of bounds or off the block.”

The Badgers (15-9, 5-7 Big Ten) are on the road this weekend, traveling to Ohio State and No. 20 Michigan for a pair of Big Ten matches.

UW beat both the Buckeyes (10-14, 1-11 Big Ten) and the Wolverines (18-6, 6-6 Big Ten) earlier this year, and a weekend sweep would help get the team back on track toward their postseason goals.

“It definitely helps knowing that we won the first time around,” setter Nikki Klingsporn said. “But Michigan has improved a lot, and so has Ohio State with a new coach coming in, so we are obviously not going to take them lightly. We have been working hard all week in practice, and we are going to bring that with us this weekend.”

“I think it is a boost of confidence for our players,” head coach Pete Waite added. “Especially against Michigan, our team was able to come back after bringing down two sets and rally for the win.”

Ohio State and Michigan each present a different challenge, and the Badgers will have to adjust to their respective styles of play.

“For Michigan it is a little more of a veteran group,” Waite said. “They have some nice athletes out of the middle, and Zimmerman is a nice setter. She controls the game pretty well. I think with Ohio State what they have actually done is they have moved one of their top middles to the outside positions, and she is getting a lot of good swings.”

After starting the season with high expectations, UW has dropped five of their last six matches, including a tough five-set loss to Michigan State last Friday. To overcome this rough streak, both the coaches and the players have increased the intensity of practice.

“Practice has been very intense and very competitive,” Klingsporn said. “We have done a lot of really competitive drills, and we have done drills that have us always moving around. We have focused on defense this week, trying to get the team to be more consistent.”

Despite the inconsistencies the Badgers have had to battle, the team remains upbeat about the rest of the season.

“We need to look forward and say tomorrow is a new day,” Jeffers said. “We still have a lot of games left, we are trying to get into the tournament, and there are still a lot of positive things that could come out of this season. What already happened is just behind us. We are moving forward.”