Although students will get a break after Tuesday, the men’s basketball team will not.

NIU (0-4) plays Games 5 and 6 of its season over the break. The first contest will be at 6 p.m. at Indiana State (1-2).

The Huskies then host Stephen F. Austin (2-1) at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Convocation Center. This will be the first home game of the season for NIU.

However, tonight’s trip to Terre Haute, Ind., wraps up an opening stretch of five road games for the Huskies.

“Its a tough schedule. Certainly we may be the only team in the nation that started with its first five games on the road,” head coach Ricardo Patton said. “That’s not a schedule we want year-in, year-out.”

However, it was a schedule Patton thought his team needed to play.

The first-year coach was locked into the BTI Tip-Off Tourney to start the season. However, Patton choose to play Southern Illinois and Indiana State on the road because “the two games were games that we thought we needed to play.”

Indiana State has a rich basketball history. NBA hall-of-famer Larry Bird wore a Sycamore jersey during the late 1970s, and coach John Wooden had a short stay in the late 1940s.

The present team finished 10th last season in the Missouri Valley Conference, and is returning four starters from last year.

Similar to Indiana State, Stephen F. Austin is also returning four starters from its 2006-2007 squad.

The Lumberjacks posted a 86-78 victory over the Huskies last season. It was the first match between the two teams in school history.

To produce a victory this time around, NIU guard Jake Anderson believes the team has to do the same things it has been trying to do. The key, though, will be if the Huskies can execute.

“We are going to come out and do what we’ve been doing,” Anderson said. “We just have to finally execute and hope it works.”

One facet of the game the Huskies have to change is the turnover-to-assist ratio. In four games this season, NIU has produced 38 assists to 81 turnovers. This equates to a ratio of 0.47 assist per turnover.

The Huskies opposition has turned the ball over 66 times compared to 67 assists.

Last season, after four games, NIU had a ratio of 1.09 assists per turnover. The Huskies finished the 2006-2007 campaign with a ratio of 0.80 assists per turnovers.

“Some of the turnovers were just being careless with the ball and some were us complicating it,” Patton said after a loss to SIU. “And some were caused by SIU. They’re a sound defensive team.”