NIU men’s and women’s tennis will both go up against non-conference foes this weekend.

For the men, the two home matches begin Saturday against St. Louis (5-10) and finish Sunday against Bradley (7-10).

The Huskies (15-5, 1-0 MAC) easily handled St. Louis last season, defeating the Billikens 5-1 on the road.

St. Louis started out this season winning its first three matches, but tough competition has led to recent struggles.

St. Louis has gone winless on the road this year and has dropped its last nine matches after starting the season 5-1.

Bradley poses a slightly bigger threat to NIU. The Braves beat NIU at home last season 4-2 and went on to finish the season with a 14-11 record.

This season, however, Bradley stumbled out of the gates, starting its campaign 1-7. As of late, Bradley has shown some promise, winning six of seven matches before dropping its last two to Florida Atlantic and Stetson. Bradley has also gone winless in away matches this season, with the exception of one neutral site victory.

NIU men’s coach Patrick Fisher continues to keep a watchful eye on the injured Maksym Bartiuk, the team’s top singles player for the past two seasons. Fisher hopes Bartiuk can play in at least one of the weekend’s two contests.

“He was able to play last week, but he’s still coming off an injury and isn’t 100 percent,” Fisher said. “So we’re monitoring him closely, but we’d like him to play in one of the matches this weekend. We’re not sure which one that may be, but we really want to make sure he’s most healthy for conference play and the conference tournament.”

Women’s tennis will start the weekend at home Friday against Valparaiso (4-8, 0-3 Horizon League). Valparaiso has gone 1-4 on the road this season, and in those losses, the Crusaders have failed to win a single point. In all of its losses this year, Valparaiso has been outscored 56-2.

The Huskies (7-7, 0-2 MAC) have been outscored 20-1 in its past three matches. Despite both team’s recent three match losing streaks, the Huskies may have the slight edge, not losing at home so far this season.

The Huskies will then travel to Galesburg for Saturday’s match against Western Illinois (0-9, 0-3 Summit League).

NIU defeated Western Illinois last season to pick up one of its two team victories and the Huskies seem to have improved much more over the past year than the Leathernecks, who have been outscored 60-3 this season. Western Illinois has been blanked in eight of its nine matches.

“There’s opponents that Western’s lost to that we’ve beaten so we feel pretty confident,” said NIU coach Ryun Ferrell. “It’s nice to play somebody other than a league school right away right now so we can work on some of those things that we’ve been talking about against a non-conference school and tighten up our weak areas.”