The fourth time is the charm. At least that’s what Huskies’ coach Jim Molinari hopes as his squad, on a two-game winning streak, goes into tonight’s 7:00 game against Illinois-Chicago.

NIU (9-7) has had three two-game winning streaks this season but has lost its next outing all three times.

In UIC, the Huskies face an opponent that has an 11-6 mark with major victories against Michigan State (65-57) and Iowa State (76-75), but has hit the skids lately, dropping its last two matches.

The Flames lost their last game prior to tonight’s contest, 75-47 to Northern Iowa. The Huskies know how UIC feels as they have already dropped two games to Northern Iowa this season.

A major factor in the recent decline of coach Bob Hallberg’s squad is the injury to UIC’s leading scorer Chris Harris.

“We haven’t played well in the last two games since Harris was injured,” said Hallberg. Harris was averaging 19 points for the Flames before the injury.

Hallberg mentions a familiar name to Huskie fans when talking about the key to beating NIU.

“Whenever you play NIU, the key is to not let Donnell Thomas go crazy and get 30 points and 15 rebounds. Thomas is among the best ball players we’ll face all year and Donald Whiteside is as good a point guard as we’ve seen.

“The problem they pose is that they’re good inside and outside,” said the third-year coach. “Whiteside and Thomas have given us fits. We’ve seen them for two years and they’ve gotten better. I hate to think what they’ll be like when they are seniors.”

For his part, Molinari hopes that his Huskies aren’t catching UIC at the wrong time despite their recent problems. “Timing is so important when you play a certain team,” said Molinari. “We might be catching UIC at the worst possible time, after back-to-back losses.”

The game should prove to be a defensive battle as UIC enters the contest ranked second in the AMCU Conference in field-goal percentage defense (.452), while the Huskies are holding opponents to a .458 shooting average. Molinari’s crew has yielded an average of 62.4 points to opponents this season.

The tempo of the contest, however, is not something that Hallberg and his team is concentrating on.

“We can’t worry a lot about what and how (NIU) is going to run, we have to worry more about our own adjustments.”

The Huskies’ Donnell “D-Train” Thomas enters the game needing only five more points to pass George Bork and move into the 12th spot on the all-time NIU scoring list. The six-foot-four Huskie workhorse is leading the team in scoring with a 17.7 average and has tallied 1,110 career points for the Huskies.

Tonight’s regionally televised game is the AMCU game of the week and will be shown locally on SportsChannel on a tape-delayed basis at 9 p.m. Chicago’s own Jesse White Tumblers will be on hand to provide the half-time entertainment.