Men’s basketball has not finished with a winning record since the 2005-06 season when it went 17-11, but Huskies fans have plenty of reasons to pick their heads up this year.

The team won four-straight games to close out the regular season — including wins against Toledo, Western Michigan, Central Michigan and Ball State — before losing to Akron in the first round of the MAC Tournament last year. Though the loss was disappointing, the strong finish to the season was a bright spot considering all of the games were against conference opponents.

It might be too soon to speak, but I expect the team to be much improved this season. I’m not expecting a flawless year, and I think it may take time to get things going, but I think the Huskies have a chance at winning close to 20 games if they can stay consistent.

Improvements on the road

The Huskies will have to perform a lot better on the road if they hope to see their fortunes change in the upcoming season. They went 4-11 on the road in 2014 compared to a 10-5 record at home. It’s usually expected that a team will perform better at home, but improvements definitely need to be made on away games.

“When you win your last four regular season games — one is against Central Michigan, who won the MAC West — we won at Toledo, we beat Western Michigan finally, we beat Ball State ­— we had a lot of momentum at the end of last season,” said head coach Mark Montgomery.

Slow-but-steady turnaround

Montgomery is now 39-84 since taking over head coaching duties for the Huskies in 2011, but the team has improved drastically over the last two years. NIU finished 5-26 and 5-25 in his first two seasons, but have combined for a 29-33 record in two seasons since. He’s done a great job of turning the program around at a slow-but-steady pace.

Montgomery had much success as an assistant coach before his stint with the Huskies, spending 10 seasons as an assistant and associate head coach at Michigan State as part of Tom Izzo’s staff. He led the Huskies to their first MAC Tournament win since 2003 in his first season with the team.

“We are very excited for this upcoming season,” Montgomery said. “Time flies; this is my fifth year now [at NIU], and I’ve been coaching on the collegiate level for 20 years now, and I’m just as excited in year five as I was in year one. We are less than three weeks away from the home opener and it feels like it’s real now.”

High-accolade freshman class

The Huskies have seven returning players including five sophomores, two juniors and three seniors. Montgomery said he’s played the returning players against the incoming freshman to bring the younger players down to Earth.

“Everyone has been talking about our freshmen class,” he said. “They’re coming in with high accolades because of what they’ve done in high school. I think that Jaylen Key will play the four or five, he’s probably our strongest freshman and is most ready to play right now. Levi Bradley — he is a little behind because he had to sit out a lot of the preseason with a shin injury — but he will definitely will be a stretch four-man for us.”

Only two players averaged double figures in scoring last year, and the team shot just 31 percent from the three-point line. These numbers must be enhanced if NIU plans on playing deeper in the season.

“We’re excited for the new challenges and opportunities we have this season,” Montgomery said. “We’ve put down some team goals and some basic goals we have every year. Of course we want to improve daily in every single practice, and we want to become great teammates. We want to learn and continue to learn how to compete and practice hard in every practice and then carry that over to games.

Lessons from close losses

NIU outrebounded its opponents last year and was only outscored by an average of one point in its losses. Learning how to close games and what not to do in the last four to five minutes can separate great teams from good ones.

It’s been a while since the team has had high success, so expectations for it may not be as high as it would hope. This can either drive a team to prove people wrong, or it could hamper a team’s confidence. Fans must be patient if they hope to see good results for men’s basketball. It won’t be an overnight affair, and it may take another year or two, but I expect to see a change in culture in the near future for the team.

The Huskies kick off the season against Cal State Northridge at 7 p.m. Nov. 13 in DeKalb.