At the beginning of the season, NIU was picked to finish sixth in the MAC West at the league’s media day. That being said, most people are surprised to see the Huskies in the thick of the MAC West race seven games into the season.

The Huskies (4-3, 3-1 MAC) finish up a stretch of three straight home games Saturday against Bowling Green at 3 p.m. The game can be seen on Comcast Sportsnet.

It’s basically a must-win game for NIU if it wants to stay in the MAC title race, as well as in contention for a bowl game, especially with key games at No. 20 Ball State and at home against Central Michigan coming up.

“I’m not really surprised,” said quarterback Chandler Harnish, talking about the team’s success midway through the season. “I think we have a lot of good things ahead. But I don’t think we should focus on the future at all. We are just focusing on the most important game, which is the next one.”

Even with the Huskies having success, NIU head coach Jerry Kill says he doesn’t really pay attention to conference races.

“I don’t talk about it, and we won’t talk about it now,” Kill said. “When we were at Southern Illinois we never talked about the playoffs.”

Bowling Green (3-4, 1-3 MAC) is coming off a 27-20 loss to Miami (Ohio), a team that NIU beat two weeks ago. The Falcons have fared well on the road so far going 3-1, and bring their spread offense to Huskie Stadium.

“They’ve got some skill, skill that we haven’t seen,” Kill said. “They are very wide open on offense. They have a lot of talented personnel.”

Linebacker T.J. Griffin says the Huskies need to focus on Bowling Green and can’t afford to look ahead to Ball State.

“Bowling Green is the most important game because it is the next one,” Griffin said. “It’s not really a good thing to look back or forward into the season.”

Saturday’s game is the last Saturday game for NIU, as the last four games of the season are all on either a Tuesday or Wednesday.