After missing the MAC tournament last season, NIU men’s soccer was back with just one thing on its mind: a MAC championship.

That’s exactly what the Huskies (14-5-0, 4-2-0 MAC) accomplished after a pair of 1-0 shutout victories at Akron over Buffalo Friday and Western Michigan Sunday.

This is the second time in school history that NIU has won the MAC tournament and the first time since 2006.

This is what Eric Luzzi, NIU’s head men’s soccer coach, envisioned for NIU when he got the head job in 2009.

“I really thought that we had the potential to do something very big and be a team that is nationally ranked every single year and be a team that is competing for championships every single year,” Luzzi said. “So the fact that in year three of our project its come to fruition is pretty cool.”

Luzzi is proud of the Huskies for putting in the work that got them here and thinks the MAC title says a lot about his team.

“Honestly, it says a lot,” Luzzi said. “The fact that Akron is in our conference and we are going home today as conference champions, to be completely honest, we didn’t come play very well today at all. But once again, our team found a way, not on our best day, found a way to win the game and I think they deserved to win the title tonight.”

The Huskies took care of the Bulls Friday thanks to sophomore Gael Rivera’s fourth goal of the season that was assisted by freshman Isaac Kannah in the 63rd minute.

The championship game against the Broncos came down to the wire and looked to be heading into overtime, but NIU sophomore Sean Totsch scored the game-winning goal with just six minutes remaining.

Totsch scored his second goal of the season on a header that was assisted by Kannah coming off a free kick.

“To be honest, it didn’t sink into me that we just scored,” Luzzi said. “The way the game was flowing, we probably should have scored much earlier, and the fact that it finally happened, it really didn’t sink in until after the game was over six minutes later.”

The Huskies outshot the Broncos 9-4 and had control of the ball for most of the game.

The key for the Huskies, as it has been all year, was the defensive effort.

Junior goal keeper Jordan Godsey, along with the Huskies’ defense, earned their 11th shutout of the season with their two shutouts this weekend.

“Jordan was as we have come to expect: very solid,” Luzzi said. “Francis, as we have come to expect, was fantastic. The whole back four were very, very, very safe, very secure, made a lot of good decisions in pressure filled moments. The whole unit was very solid this weekend.”

With the MAC championship, the Huskies have earned themselves an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

“To be fair, I think whenever we talk about any goals that I have for this program, that is the number one for me,” Luzzi said. “I mean, to win the regular season, would be great. To win the conference tournament, it’s great. But the biggest goal for us is always going to be to make the NCAA tournament and hopefully that is something that is going to continue to be the expectation for our team.”