The NIU baseball team is used to life on the road.

NIU (14-17 overall, 5-4 MAC) has played 22 of its 31 games on the road, and will get back into MAC play with a three-game series at Miami-Ohio (14-16, 4-5) today at 6:30 p.m.

“The travel made the last couple days tough for us,” NIU coach Ed Mathey said. “It was buffered by that win at Northern Iowa, our guys know it’s time to get on that bus again and go. It’s nice that on Friday we don’t play until 6:30 so we can get some rest during the day.”

Scheduled to take the mound for NIU in the three-game set, at a stadium Mathey said was the “neatest venue in the MAC” to play in, will be senior right-hander Nick Hall (3-3), sophomore righty Trevor Feeney (3-1) and sophomore righty Brian Smith (3-5).

“Nick, Trevor and Brian will need to get ahead in the count and work the zone,” Mathey said.

Offensively, senior right fielder Brian Toner used a 3-for-3 performance at the plate against UNI to assume the team lead with a .368 batting average.

Toner, who is battling a sore knee that caused him to miss the Illinois State game, was eager to get back into the box against UNI. Toner said he was so locked in and the baseball looked like a beach ball when it left the pitchers hand.

“Man, it felt good to play on Wednesday,” Toner said. “I couldn’t wait to get back out there. I felt like I was back in Little League again because it was so much fun just to be able to be out there.”

The defensive miscues which have plagued NIU lately were absent in the UNI win, a trend Mathey said he hopes will continue in the important midsection of the schedule.

“This is a crucial point of our schedule,” Toner said. “We are familiar with these teams because we have played them before, and they are better scouted than some of the teams we started the season off with.”

The MAC West standings are a log jam, with Ball State and Central Michigan tied for first place with identical 6-3 records. NIU, Eastern Michigan and Toledo are knotted up with 5-4 records.

“After this weekend you will start to see some separation in the standings,” Mathey said.