Chances are high that the NIU women’s basketball team will win its postseason conference championship. The Huskies have lost only one North Star Conference game in the past two seasons.

But what if the Huskies somehow commit the unforeseeable and lose an automatic NCAA tournament invitation by blowing the NSC tournament? Should they still be granted entry into the NCAA tournament?

NSC coaches think so.

“I think the NIU’s women’s basketball team has unequivocally played their way into the NCAA tournament,” said DePaul head coach Doug Bruno. “They’ve already played themselves in.”

“The tournament committee looks at teams who have been there (NCAA tournament) before,” said Valparaiso head coach David Wolter. “Northern has been there.”

Teams that don’t win their conference tournament always have doubts about whether they will make the NCAA’s. But Wolter said the Huskies have a bid locked up unless they play absolutely atrocious basketball during next week’s NSC tournament.

“But I don’t see them doing that,” he said. “They’re getting better every game.”

NIU head coach Jane Albright agreed with her NSC counterparts; she thinks the Huskies should make the NCAA tournament even if they don’t win their conference tournament.

“It’d be a close call, (but) I think we’ve warranted an (NCAA) bid,” Albright said. “We’ve played a national schedule. I think we’ve had some big wins, and I think the teams we lost to will be in the NCAA tournament.

“We don’t have any losses against teams of low caliber. Strength of schedule is what the NCAA puts a lot of emphasis on, and we’ve certainly had that.”

Bruno agreed.

“They’ve earned their way into the tournament by playing an excellent schedule against NCAA tournament-field teams,” he said.

“Any program,” he said, “that plays such quality opposition as Washington, Stephen F. Austin, Nebraska, Michigan State, Northwestern, Louisville, Vanderbilt and SIU, not to mention the tough teams in the NSC, has done what’s supposed to be done to get in the tournament.”