History repeated itself twice for the NIU wrestling team as the Huskies split their weekend matches with a win over Eastern Illinois and a loss at Northern Iowa.

Going into Cedar Falls on Sunday, the No. 23 Huskies (12-4) had only beat Northern Iowa (5-7) once in their last 26 meetings. The No. 13 Panthers most recently defeated the Huskies 24-10 last year in DeKalb.

NIU sophomore Johnny Galloway began the meet with a 15-12 victory over UNI’s Nick Baima, ranked No. 12 in the country.

The 165-pound Galloway picked up his team-leading 23rd win and gave the Huskies a 3-0 lead.

“We all knew he was good,” NIU coach Dave Grant said. “Now he’s going to be ranked in the top 20 in the country in his weight class. It was a very big win for him.”

The advantage was short-lived as Northern Iowa scored 17 unanswered points to take a 14-point lead. NIU came back to even the match at 17 on the strength of a 15-0 technical fall win by freshman Chad Vandiver and a pin by junior Josh Wooton. But Northern Iowa took the last match at 157 pounds to seal a 23-17 victory.

“It’s great for the team that we can go out and hang with the best teams in the country,” Grant said. “It doesn’t matter who we face, we got to go as hard as possible, and I expect that out of our guys.”

Last year at Eastern Illinois, NIU jumped out to a 20-0 lead and held on to win 26-13. A crowd of 255 people saw more of the same Friday night at the Convocation Center. Despite dropping the first match of the evening, the Huskies won the next 26 points and finished off EIU (1-6) by a 30-9 margin.

NIU senior co-captain Sam Hiatt set the pace for NIU in the second match of the evening. The 133-pound DeKalb native scored a 14-6 major decision over Eastern’s Casey Carrino to give his team a 10-3 lead.

“I needed to come out and set the tone and pick up the intensity a little bit,” Hiatt said. “I kind of had a little letdown against Central, so I just wanted to go out there and compete hard and dominate.”

Galloway also picked up a win with a pin of EIU’s Kevin Knabjian. He garnered a takedown in the first 10 seconds and pinned his opponent 63 seconds into the match.

“I think I did all right,” said Galloway, who picked up his sixth pin of the season. “The team did better overall, and I’m just glad I could give the team momentum.”

The Huskies return to action at 2 p.m. Sunday at Southern Illinois in Edwardsville.