NIU women’s soccer controls its own fate.

The team is heading into the final game of the regular season with home-field advantage of the opening round of the MAC Tournament on the line.

The Huskies travel to face Western Michigan (4-10-3, 2-6-2) at 1 p.m. today.

NIU (8-5-4, 5-3-2) earned a playoff berth this past weekend, and a victory Thursday will bring the team’s first round of the MAC Tournament to DeKalb on Sunday.

“We don’t sit here and calculate points and try to figure everything out. We just go and play to win,” said head coach Marci Miller-Jobson. “Our goal is to go and do the best we can and see where we lie after that game.”

The Huskies are 4-6 against WMU. Last season, the Huskies notched a 3-0 win over the Broncos, a game in which senior Karen Enockson scored two goals and added an assist.

“Western Michigan is going to go out and play for their pride and play as hard as they can,” Miller-Jobson said. “That’s what I would want my team to do. They showed that last weekend when they beat Central Michigan. It shows that they’re continuing to battle and they’re not laying down for anybody.”

This is the second-straight season NIU has advanced to the MAC Tournament. Before 2006, the last time the Huskies had made it to the postseason was 1999.

“It’s great because it’s a goal you have at the beginning of the season,” Miller-Jobson said. “It shows improvement of the program, getting into the MAC Tournament two years in a row and having a winning season.”