Familiar faces will collide at 7:05 p.m. today at the Convocation Center when the NIU basketball team plays North Central College.

A Division III school, the Cardinals, who finished 8-17 the past two years, will mark the first exhibition game of the season for the Huskies.

On Tuesday, NIU, the preseason No. 1 team in the MAC, received three votes for the Associated Press top 25 poll – the first time NIU ever has received preseason votes. This puts the Huskies at No. 48 nationally, tied with Georgia, Illinois-Chicago, Nevada and Wichita State.

Benjy returns

North Central’s third-year head coach Benjy Taylor was an assistant at NIU from 1995 to 2000. Taylor assisted the Huskies team that went 20-10 in 1996 and made the NCAA tournament.

Coaching vs. former school

NIU’s current administrative assistant Steve Christiansen graduated from North Central in 1999. The 26-year-old played two years with the Cardinals, from 1995 to 1997.

In Christiansen’s time at NCC, the team never played any Division I teams, but he said he knows it would’ve been a big deal if they had.

“We would have treated it like any other game, but the thoughts in the back of our minds would be that we could make a name for ourselves if we won,” Christiansen said. “I think there’s a little bit of the unknown factor that goes into it, and these are talented players that are playing college basketball no matter the division they are in.”

Playing former teammates

The third connection between the Huskies and Cardinals is NIU freshman guard Ryan Paradise.

The 6-foot-2 Paradise grew up 10 minutes away from the North Central campus in downtown Naperville. The Cardinals have five players on their roster who played with Paradise at Naperville Central High School.

“I liked all of them when I played with them,” said Paradise, a three-year varsity starter when he was at Naperville Central. “It’ll be a fun homecoming, but it won’t faze my play one way or another.

“I played at the college so many times when I was growing up,” he said. “I know they play kind of an up-tempo, run-and-gun game because they don’t have a lot of size.”