Senior Andy Champion, of the NIU men’s soccer team, agreed that coaches don’t like when their players look past a game.

However, at 1 p.m. Sunday at Huskie Soccer Field, the Huskies (11-4 overall, 4-1 MAC) host Akron and will get their first shot to become MAC regular season champions since joining the conference in 1997.

But first, NIU will have a 3 p.m. match today at Wisconsin-Milwaukee for rights to the John Lewang Cup. The rivalry cup was started when John Lewang died in a car accident in 1981 before he could begin his second season as NIU’s head coach.

But Champion said Akron is by far the more important game.

“Beating Milwaukee would be icing on the cake,” Champion said. “But we’re playing for a MAC championship Sunday. We want to be the No. 1 seed going into the MAC tournament and get that first-round bye.”

The last time NIU won a conference championship was in 1990, when the team competed in the Mid-Continent Conference and went 13-5-2. It was actually the second consecutive conference championship won by the Huskies after the squad took home the Big Central Conference title in 1989, finishing with its best record in the history of the program at 14-4-2.

NIU’s current coach Steve Simmons did stress to his team that UWM is an important game, but the second-year coach has his sights set on not just winning the MAC, but getting to the NCAA tournament.

“Milwaukee is as close as we’re going to get to playing a first-round NCAA caliber team,” Simmons said. “It will be a great test to see if this team can play at that level. If they want to challenge themselves, our guys have got to perform at Milwaukee.”

UWM beat last year’s MAC tournament champion Western Michigan in the first round of the 2003 NCAA Tournament.

Although all eyes are on Akron, both Simmons and Champion said that if NIU should not win the MAC tournament, then winning its three remaining games would bode well for NIU to have a shot at an at-large bid to the NCAA tourney.

“We’re in striking distance of being selected,” Simmons said. “The [Rating Percentage Index] is what the NCAA looks at and we’re in the top 60.”

The NCAA tourney takes 48 teams and calculates the RPI using the following formula: 25 percent of the team’s winning percentage, 50 percent of the opponents’ average winning percentage and 25 percent of the opponent’s opponents’ average winning percentage.

MAC foes Akron and Kentucky received at-large bids into last season’s NCAA tournament, in which both teams advanced to the second round.

Akron plays UK today before coming to NIU and can win the MAC if it beats UK and NIU this weekend.

The Huskies will also have Senior Day ceremonies for Andy Champion, Bernhard Hagevik, Bruce Conrad and Tony Deldin before playing Akron on Sunday.

“After starting 2-0, we thought we were going to have another season below .500,” Conrad said. “But we kept our confidence up and it’s been a great year. It really hasn’t set in yet.”