Back in October, NIU basketball coach Jim Molinari said that the theme for the 1990-91 season would be momentum.

And it is momentum that the Huskies will seek to continue building as they head into Illinois-Chicago for a Thursday night encounter with the Flames in the last regular-season game for NIU.

NIU is in the midst of a two-game winning streak, with wins over Cleveland State and Akron, after suffering its first two-game losing streak of the year at conference rival Wisconsin-Green Bay and Nebraska.

With the Mid-Continent Conference Tournament looming ahead next week, the Huskies will try not to look past the Flames who have only lost twice at home this season.

“It’s going to be a very difficult game,” Molinari said. “They lost to Wisconsin-Green Bay, (but) in overtime. We are going to be in the same situation that Akron was in with us.”

The situation that Molinari is referring to is Senior Night. UIC will honor its seniors Thursday night and there will be plenty of emotion flowing at the UIC Pavilion.

In addition, the Flames will be out to avenge a 20-point loss at the hands of the Huskies earlier this season at the Chick Evans Field House.

In that contest, Donnell Thomas and Donald Whiteside both scored in double figures in leading NIU to victory.

“I think we are going to try and keep Whiteside and Thomas locked up in the locker room for the entire game,” joked UIC head coach Bob Hallberg. “We are going to have to play much better than we did the last time we played them. They’re a very hard team to play, but we know what we can do.”

However, knowing what to do and actually going out and doing it are two entirely different matters, and Hallberg hopes that his familiarity with NIU will give his team an added edge in their game preparation and performance.

“There are no secrets after 27 games,” Hallberg said. “We know what Northern’s going to do and they know what we are going to do. There’s no secret device for beating them. We just have to go out and do it.”

For the Huskies, a win would make them the outright M-C champions. NIU enters the game with a 13-2 conference record, just one game ahead of second place UW-GB which has posted a 12-3 conference record and plays its season finale at Valparaiso Thursday night.

NIU and UW-GB will be the favorites to win the M-C Tournament which begins March 3 at Green Bay, but Hallberg feels that parody is the rule in this conference, rather than the exception.

“NIU has established itself as the best team in the conference over the 16-game regular season,” Hallberg said. “But any team in our conference, including our team, is just as good as any of the others and is capable of going up there and winning it.”