The NIU men’s basketball team has a big game with a tough opponent coming up—but first they have to play DePaul.

Although Tuesday night’s 7 p.m. game against the Blue Demons has been receiving all the attention of the media and fans, Huskies coach Jim Molinari is pointing to Saturday’s home game against Mid-Continent rival Wisconsin-Green Bay as the key match this week.

“Green-Bay is where our focus has to be. Although we’re going to fight our tails off against DePaul, it’s our conference that’s really important,” Molinari said. “Our rivalries will be with Green Bay and UIC because they’re more on our level.”

The game is an expected sellout, which would be the first full house for a men’s NIU game since 1986.

The Huskies enter the DePaul match with a 10-game winning streak and a surprising 11-1 mark. DePaul enters with an 8-5 mark, but has won its last four while facing a tough schedule that has included Louisville, UCLA, North Carolina and Houston.

“We weren’t playing well early, but if you look at our losses, they came against some pretty good basketball teams,” DePaul coach Joey Meyer said. “We’re not where we want to be, but we’re getting better.”

Despite NIU’s superior record entering Tuesday’s game, DePaul is the favorite, as the two programs still find themselves miles apart.

“DePaul is on a different level than Northern Illinois,” Molinari said. “DePaul’s men’s team is one of the top programs in the country year-in and year-out. Their printing budget is probably our recruiting budget, and from our standpoint, there won’t be too many times when a Mid-Continent team will beat DePaul.

“We can beat DePaul on certain nights, but not on a consistent basis, not unless we change our overall outlook towards our program, our facilities, the whole thing. It does a disservice to our team to judge them against DePaul.”

ow well the Huskies stack up against the Blue Demons will be clearer after Tuesday’s battle, a game both sides agree will be decided by which squad controls the pace of the game.

“That (the pace) is going to be one of the key factors, and also who’s playing the best defense,” Meyer said.

“For us to win we’re going to have to play great,” Molinari said. “They’re going to have to play average to win. The fact is if we played DePaul every night we wouldn’t be 11 and one.”

The Blue Demons overpowered NIU 69-51 at the Rosemont Horizon in the last outing between the squads in the Huskies’ 1990 season finale.

Tuesday’s game, however, will be fought on NIU’s home court, where the Huskies have won 10 in a row. Molinari credits the home crowd, especially a group of students who sit behind the basket in section F, the “Dog Pound,” for creating a winning atmosphere.

“What made the big difference in the Valparaiso game (a 79-55 NIU victory) was the ‘Dog Pound.’ That was what really made the difference. Valparaiso last year was one of those situations where no one would be cheering and they have created a lot of emotion.

“This week we play two excellent basketball teams, Depaul and Green Bay, and we have them at home. Hopefully we’ll have the home-court emotion for both games, not just DePaul,” Molinari said.

“The thing that’s going to get us in postseason play is going to be league play. We need to have the same kind of crowd (as Tuesday’s) against Green Bay.”