Thirty-five days ago, NIU and Illinois-Chicago squared off for a run at the championship of the UIC McClendon Classic.

UIC emerged with a 101-90 home-court victory and the championsip trophy, and NIU fell into a seven-game tailspin that didn’t end until last Saturday’s win at Davidson.

Tonight at 7:05 p.m. in Chick Evans Field House, the Huskies hope to return the favor.

But they’ll have to do it without the services of center Antwon Harmon, who suffered a severely sprained right ankle during Monday’s 80-69 loss to Akron.

“(Harmon’s x-rays showed) some little (bone) chips that they thought were there from before,” NIU head coach Jim Rosborough said Tuesday afternoon. “It wasn’t anything as a result of last night.”

Despite Harmon’s departure, NIU did receive some good news. Guard Jo Jo Jackson should be available to the Huskies tonight after missing two games due to illness.

Rosborough will replace Harmon with either 6-9 freshman Brent Varner or 6-5 freshman Mike Hidden in the starting lineup. If Hidden starts, 6-7 sophomore Andrew Wells would move to center with Hidden at small forward.

“If we go with Mike, the matchups are pretty good for us,” Rosborough said. “It hurts us from a depth standpoint without Harmon and a rotation standpoint because we’d gotten down to a pretty decent rotation.”

The loss of Harmon depletes an already-sparse NIU bench. UIC assistant coach Denny Wills said NIU’s bench was the difference in the first meeting between the two teams.

“Their biggest problem is their lack of depth,” Wills said. “When we played them, you could just see when we went to our bench and brought in our sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth man, there was a big, marked difference between ours and theirs.”

Missing from that game was NIU guard Stacy Arrington, who left the team after a basketball disagreement with Rosborough. Arrington returned six games ago and is now back in the starting lineup averaging 16.2 points per game.

“(Arrington’s) much more of an offensive guard than Jo Jo Jackson,” Wills said. “When they played us without Stacy, it seemed like they tried to get the ball inside more to Donnell (Thomas).”

Thomas scored 24 points and pulled down a season-high 20 rebounds in the McClendon championship en route to being named tournament MVP.