Regular season play comes to a close for NIU men’s soccer this Saturday with a crucial match on the road against MAC opponent Hartwick.

This will be a hard-fought match as both teams have a lot on the line in terms of postseason play.

Hartwick is in dire need of a win to continue its season, or it will be over.

“They need to either win or tie to get into the MAC tournament,” said Eric Luzzi, NIU head men’s soccer coach. “If they lose, their season’s over. So, I’m sure they’re going to come out with everything that they have. They’re going to be fired up for the game. They’re going to do whatever it takes to get the result they need, so it’s going to be a difficult game. I mean, we’re talking about a team that’s fighting to extend their season.”

On the other hand, the Huskies (11-5-0, 3-2-0 MAC) already have a spot in the MAC tournament locked up, but this is an important match for seeding.

“If we lose the game, we would play Akron first,” Luzzi said. “We eventually want to play Akron, but when we play Akron, we would prefer that it would be for the conference championship. So we probably want to avoid that, So it’s important for us to go out and get a positive result.”

NIU comes off a 1-0 loss at UW Milwaukee and looks to rebound. The Hawks (5-5-5, 1-1-3 MAC) come off three consecutive ties in MAC play.

“We’ve generally been pretty good [at responding],” Luzzi said. “In the past this season, fortunately, we haven’t lost many games, so there haven’t been that many opportunities to respond, but I would expect the guys to come out fired up.”

In contrast to the Huskies’ previous match against UW Milwaukee, they will have to give a full 90-minute performance to come out with a victory.

“Based on [our performance against Milwaukee], I think our biggest thing is we probably have to put together 90 minutes,” Luzzi said. “Last night, we were really, really good for half the game and not great for the first half. So we are looking forward to Saturday to put together a 90-minute performance.”