NMU’s Ben Wolf takes a shot with GVSU’s Jake Van Tubbergen on defense at the Barry Event Center Thursday evening Febuary 20, 2020. (Journal photo)

MARQUETTE — Every game against a rival is considered a big game, but for the Northern Michigan University men’s basketball team, Thursday’s game might be the biggest one of the year.

If the Wildcats take down Michigan Tech on Thursday night, they’ll probably make the GLIAC Tournament. If they don’t, NMU will most likely miss out on the postseason and the year will come to an end.

“It’s obviously a huge game for us with playoff implications,” Northern head coach Matt Majkrzak said Tuesday. “I would say first and foremost that’s the biggest thing we have going on. The reason it is about Tech is if we win, we go to Tech, and if we win, we’ll be 2-0 against Tech, and we’ll go to Tech for a chance to go 3-0. I told our seniors that we’d finish 10-10. Last year’s team finished 11-9 and I think a 10-10 team that beat Tech twice, and then if you could beat Tech a third time, that might go down in the Northern annals as one of the better men’s basketball seasons not resulting in a NCAA Tournament or a conference championship. Other than an NCAA Tournament or a conference championship, I think kind of ruining Tech’s season would be as good of a season as you could possibly have and our seniors understand that and our older kids understand that. So in that regard, it could be about Tech, but honestly, we want to get in the playoffs and it just kind of so happens that if we win, we know we’re going to Tech. If we lose, we could have all kinds of different things happen. So we want to get in and all we can do is control what we can control, which is winning the game. If we win the game, we go back to Tech. It’s kind of a fascinating dynamic. This time of year, there’s always some kind of odd stuff at play, but that’s kind of what’s at play for us right now.”

There was definitely a lot at play for the Wildcats last Saturday. Heading into the game against Davenport, NMU’s tournament hopes were slim. They fell to Grand Valley State on Thursday in double overtime and needed to take down the Panthers if they wanted to keep their postseason chances alive. NMU pulled it off, getting a big game-tying triple from Dolapo Olayinka to send the contest into overtime and then Olayinka dropped in a layup to give the ‘Cats the lead in the extra session. Northern then made its free throws in the final seconds to put the game away.

“Thursday was the toughest game I’ve ever been a part of,” Majkrzak said. “I’ve never felt that low after a game and I’ve never felt that bad after a game. A little bit for me, you know first year, there’s some things where those older kids, I just felt crushed. And then everything went completely wrong for us after that game ended where we were scoreboard watching, and we went from thinking we had a chance at the conference tournament, and we foul with 0.2 (seconds) left and now we’re out. That was kind of how I thought unless we won two. And then everything broke right for us on Saturday, including us winning a game where I didn’t think we played as well on Saturday as we did Thursday, but we kind of did the opposite. Make a bunch of plays, have a couple things that we were fortunate to make every shot down the stretch and we go get a win. It’s like the weirdest emotional swing of feeling really down to just being so happy for the seniors and for what it means for our season, and kind of relieved in a way. Now it’s almost like ‘Okay, the end result is pretty neutral and we’re back to trying to win one more game.'”

NMU takes on the Huskies at 5:30 p.m. Thursday. If the Wildcats land a tournament bid, they’ll play on the road next Tuesday.

Ryan Stieg can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 252. His email address is rstieg@miningjournal.net.