After taking on Wisconsin from the Big Ten and DePaul from Conference USA, the NIU men’s basketball team has the Missouri Valley conference’s Drake Bulldogs next on the schedule.

NIU (2-3) will host the Bulldogs (4-2) at 7:05 p.m. tonight at the Convocation Center. The Huskies have split a pair of games at their new arena thus far.

Progress continues to be the focal point for coach Rob Judson and the Huskies.

“It’ll be really good to make improvement,” Judson said. “That’s what we want to do. We don’t really talk about where we are in the win column or in the loss column, we just want to keep moving ahead.”

Drake is led by guard Luke McDonald, who led the MVC in scoring last year. This season he is averaging 15.2 points a game while shooting 48.3 percent from the field.

Greg Danielson and J.J. Sola, both interior players who have big bodies to bang around, may give the Huskies trouble. They are averaging almost 16 rebounds combined per game, and each provides a little over 11 points a contest.

“Drake has a good ballclub,” Judson said. “They have two senior inside players in Sola and Danielson and an excellent perimeter player in McDonald.”

The Huskie starting lineup will be lacking in size as Perry Smith, Jay Bates, Marcus Smallwood, Rome Sanders and Jamel Staten are the probable starters.

None of the five are over 6-foot-7.

Quickness should be an advantage that NIU looks to use, and according to freshman Rome Sanders, it may be a necessity in this game.

“Drake just came back from Hawaii,” Sanders said. “They’ll probably be tired in the second half, so we need to push the tempo, not rush our game, but push the ball up the court.”

Drake went 1-2 in its trip to Hawaii over the holiday break with its lone victory coming over the host Rainbows.

Free-throw shooting and taking care of the ball continue to be issues for the Huskies. As a team, they are shooting 50 percent from the foul-line and have committed 92 turnovers in five games.

“We’ll just have to do a really good job defensively on them,” Judson said. “Their two inside players are really good and with McDonald, it’s a real inside, outside threat.”