When a team from a mid-major conference beats a team from a major conference, coach and players alike have great reason to celebrate.

That is especially the case when the team is ranked No. 9. Last week NIU topped the highly regarded Wildcats 2-1 in overtime.

But it feels even better to get the result against a quality team, a result NIU coach Steve Simmons believes should have been more frequent throughout the season.

“Those of you who have watched some of these games, there’s not a heck of a lot of difference in the performance with this [Northwestern] game versus the Buffalo game,” Simmons said. “The difference is scoring.”

“There’s not a heck of a lot of difference in what we’ve been doing.”

MAC Tourney looming

After a two goal output against the Wildcats, the Huskies went stale Sunday against Hartwick. NIU was shut out in a 3-0 loss.

The defeat leaves NIU at fourth in the MAC with a record of 1-2-1, which all but guarantees that the MAC Tournament won’t make an encore appearance in DeKalb this year.

Akron (3-0-1) stands at the top of the MAC standings, while Buffalo (3-1-0) is second.

With their current schedule, it appears the Zips will be the hosts.

Akron has only one conference match left and it is with last place Western Michigan.

Injury report

Senior defender Chris Rufa came out of the team’s match against Northwestern after going up for a header on a corner kick.

In a hotly contested scrum for the ball, Rufa used his height to try and win the 50-50 ball.

In the wake of the collision that produced a strange fall, Rufa spent several minutes on the pitch and had to be helped off the field.

“Chris took kind of an awkward fall, and had a little bit of cobwebs,” Simmons said after the match was over.

Rufa started and played in the Hartwick match.