Men's Hoops Visits Northern Illinois for Regular Season Finale

Game 31
Ball State (19-11, 10-7 MAC) at Northern Illinois (12-18, 5-12 MAC)
Friday, March 2 (7 p.m. CT/8 ET)
DeKalb, Ill. (NIU Convocation Center)
Watch (ESPN3) | Listen (WLBC) | Live Stats

About the Cardinals
• Ball State wraps up the regular season with a trip to Northern Illinois for the second meeting between the teams in 11 days. The Cardinals won the first matchup 77-68 in Muncie.

• Ball State can still be anywhere from the No. 3 to the No. 6 seed in next week's MAC Tournament. The Cardinals can secure a top-4 seed and first-round bye with a win Friday. If the Cardinals lose, they would need losses by Western Michigan at Central Michigan and Kent State at Akron to get a bye.

• Ball State is one victory shy of reaching the 20-win mark in three consecutive seasons for the first time since the Cardinals had five straight 20-win campaigns from 1988-93. A win would also give BSU 20 victories in the regular season for the second straight year.

• The Cardinals are coming off a 75-51 loss at Central Michigan in which they recorded a season-low five assists and posted their second-worst shooting performance in conference play at 36.5 percent. BSU had won seven of eight before falling to Western Michigan and CMU last week.

• Junior center Trey Moses leads Ball State in conference play in both scoring (14.5 ppg) and rebounding (9.4 rpg). He had a career-high 23 points in the last meeting with NIU.

• Point guard Tayler Persons has 965 points and 296 assists in two years at Ball State, seeking to become the first player in BSU history to reach 1,000 points and 300 assists in a two-year period.

• Senior guard Sean Sellers is two games away from the school record for career games played (129), set last season by Franko House. Sellers, who has missed just two games in his career, is Ball State's all-time leading 3-point shooter with 228 makes.

Scouting Northern Illinois
• Northern Illinois is 2-8 in its past 10 games, but those two wins have come over league-leading Buffalo and Western Michigan.
• The Huskies are 10-4 at home this season.
• Sophomore guard Eugene German leads the MAC in scoring at 21.4 points per game in league play.
• Junior wing Levi Bradley is adding 14.7 points per game for NIU.
• The Huskies rank third in the league in field goal percentage at 46.3 percent during MAC play.
• NIU is playing its seventh season under head coach Mark Montgomery.

Series History
• Ball State holds a 53-37 advantage in the all-time
series, while Northern Illinois has a 24-18 edge in DeKalb.
• BSU has won four of the five meetings over the past three seasons, including a 77-68 win in Muncie just three games ago.
• Trey Moses scored a career-high 23 points and grabbed 12 rebounds in that win.
• Ball State won last season's trip to DeKalb in overtime, scoring the final eight points in regulation and the first 11 of overtime on the way to an 81-72 victory.

Men's Hoops Visits Northern Illinois for Regular Season Finale

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Players Mentioned

Franko House

Trey Moses

Tayler Persons

Sean Sellers