DeKALB | The NIU women’s basketball team (7-11, 1-4 MAC) will be looking to earn its second consecutive MAC victory this weekend when it hosts Miami (OH) (10-8, 2-3 MAC) this Sunday.

Before the Huskies defeated Ball State 73-62 Wednesday night, they hadn’t been as fortunate against conference foes. NIU dropped its first four MAC games of the 2010 season.

But all those losses weren’t necessarily a lost cause. In three of those matchups, the Huskies fell to Western Michigan by four points while their defense held Toledo and Central Michigan to 21.5 points under their season averages in scoring.

“Our shortcoming [in those games] was just careless mistakes on the offensive end,” said NIU senior guard Bianca Brown. “Obviously our defense was good and we held them to a limited amount of points but offensively we were turning the ball over.”

After playing all five of its MAC West foes, the game against Miami will have NIU starting a six game-stretch in which they play all of the MAC East.

Miami presents quite the challenge for the Huskies on the offensive end. The RedHawks currently rank third in the MAC with 72.3 points per contest; close to eight points under what the Huskies have allowed this season (64.4).

“We need to remember not to fall asleep off the ball,” Brown said. “Miami is a team that is always a threat without the ball; they’re always cutting to the basket and always trying to move and create even when they don’t have the ball.”

Miami has been one of the more balanced offensive teams so far this season. The RedHawks rank in the top five in the MAC in free throw percentage (77.6), field goal percentage (41.2) and three-point field goal percentage (36.9).

“They can really stretch you,” Huskies head coach Kathi Bennett said. “We really have to be alert [on defense].”

Although that high amount of scoring has come at a toll for Miami. The RedHawks defense currently sits at the bottom of the MAC in scoring defense, allowing 74.4 points a game.

This is all but good news and timing for an NIU team that has struggled to put the ball in the basket, averaging the second lowest amount of points per game in the MAC with 57.9.

Bennett hopes the Huskies can collectively come together out of their shell and put more points on the board.

“We haven’t had a game where all of our scorers have been on so hopefully we will have that happen soon,” Bennett said.

NIU Director of Athletics Jeff Compher announced Thursday that the tip-off time had been move up to noon to allow fans to watch both the NIU basketball game and the NFC Championship game between the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers, with kickoff slated to start at 2 p.m.