NIU men’s basketball made history Saturday, but not in a way that it would have liked to.

In their regular season finale, the Huskies (4-25, 3-13 MAC) lost at Ball State, 62-51, making it the worst team in NIU history.

With the end of the regular season, NIU now looks forward to its opening round matchup in the MAC tournament against Eastern Michigan Monday. The Huskies are the No. 12 seed in the tournament, while the Eagles are the No. 5 seed.

The Huskies dropped two close games to the Eagles already this season, but are looking forward to the tournament.

“You definitely need to start off on a good foot,” said NIU guard Aksel Bolin. “You have to come out strong like we did today against Ball State and just keep playing the whole game, don’t just play 25 minutes, play for the whole 40 minutes and put the game away. If you do that, I think you can go far in the MAC tournament.”

NIU got off to a strong start against Ball State, hitting three three-pointers to give it an early 11-2 lead with 15:52 remaining in the first half.

“We started the game off really well,” Bolin said. “We got really confident when we got out there. We got a lot of good shots, and they were going in for us.”

The Huskies kept up their strong play and right before the half, freshman Abdel Nader connected on another three with 24 seconds left in the half. NIU would take a 32-24 lead into the half.

The Huskies came out of halftime with a similar mind set as they did to start the game, as Nader and Bolin both connected on three-pointers to increase their lead, 38-27.

With the score 39-27, Ball State would go on a 14-0 run to take its first lead 41-39, since it lead 2-0 in the first half.

With 8:15 left in the game, NIU lead 44-43 when Ball State’s Jesse Berry connected on four straight three-pointers to give the Cardinals a 55-47 advantage.

“We knew Berry was a catch-and-shoot guy from deep,” said NIU coach Mark Montgomery. “You have to trail him and be there on the catch. We went to our 1-3-1 and we didn’t close out fast enough. He hit one really deep one, but it was after a scramble, so it was one of those things.

The Huskies would only score four more points the rest of the game as they let another victory slip away from them.

“I feel like this was our game and we should have won this one,” Bolin said.