It’s March 2 and time for college basketball to sweep over the nation.

Truly devoted fans are going over pages and pages of stats getting ready to fill out their tournament brackets. The not-so-devoted fans are getting ready to test how well a horned frog would do if it fought a demon deacon.

One detail not to overlook is who will gain the automatic bid as the MAC representative?

The winner of the MAC conference tournament, which will start March 7 with on-campus games and end the 12th in Cleveland at Gund Arena, will gain entrance into the big dance.

Depending on the first round on-campus matchups, the conference tournament title is up for grabs. With no more than two conference games remaining in the season there is not one team with a road record over .500 in the MAC.

So three of the four tourney games at a neutral site should make for some interesting basketball. This in turn leads to a very decent chance for NIU to make the NCAA tournament.

That’s right, why can’t the Huskies make the big dance? It seems no one can win on the road in the MAC and that favors NIU come conference tourney time.

There’s only one visible challenge left that could prevent the Huskies from being put in a bracket: NIU is out of the running to host a first round game.

If the season were to end today, the Huskies would head back to Buffalo for the second time this season. Their previous game saw the Huskies losing a heartbreaker by six points.

A positive, though, is that the game against Buffalo seemed to be the Huskies’ closest attempt at gaining a road victory.

If the Huskies are able to get a road win the first round, the sky is the limit. Games in neutral sites have been a huge plus for the Huskies this season.

In late December, NIU participated in the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Islander Classic, which NIU won by winning both its games in the four-team tournament.

So if this season’s experience is taken into consideration, a neutral site may favor the Huskies.

NIU has also beaten DePaul on the road – the same DePaul team that beat MAC West leader Bowling Green.

So the Huskies can win on the road going 2-2, 4-2 if neutral sites are counted as away games, in non-conference play. They just need to find a way to shake their current nine-game losing streak on the road.

If the Huskies can find a way to win outside of their friendly confines of the Convo, don’t be surprised if you see NIU being talked about as the season’s biggest upset making the NCAA tournament.