The Wildcats just finished wrapping up the title in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference on Saturday, averaging 99 points a game over last week’s two contests.

They’re staying at their home Vandament Arena to face the last team to get into the GLIAC Tournament, No. 8 seed Ferris State, at 7:30 p.m. in the opening-round quarterfinals.

Just win this game and NMU goes on to host the tournament semifinals and finals this weekend.

So what can go wrong?

Northern Michigan University’s Sam Privet dunks during a GLIAC men’s basketball game played against Wisconsin-Parkside on Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026, at Vandament Arena in Marquette. (Photo courtesy Cara Kamps)

For a needed dose of reality, just look back four years to this men’s GLIAC tourney in 2022. No. 1 Ferris State came into the quarters after a 16-4 regular season and hosted No. 8 Davenport, skipping along at an even .500, 10-10 in league play.

And of course, you know what happened. Davenport pulled off a monumental 91-90 upset in Big Rapids to hand the semifinals and finals hosting job to the No. 2 team in the tourney that year, Michigan Tech.

Even the Huskies couldn’t reach the championship game, as instead NMU knocked them off in their own building in the semifinals, while Davenport continued advancing before the team from Grand Rapids blitzed the Wildcats to the tune of 100-67 in the finals.

It all began with a No. 8 upset of No. 1, something the Northern team and assuredly head coach Matt Majkrzak is keeping in mind.

This year, the No. 1 Wildcats (25-5 overall) have the same 16-4 league record that Ferris did that year, while the Bulldogs are an even more modest 7-13 in GLIAC play and 10-17 overall.

Northern won’t lack confidence from their earlier matchups with FSU, winning 95-66 at home on Jan. 12 and 75-53 in Big Rapids 11 days ago on Feb. 21.

Tonight’s game will be streamed on FloCollege and can also be heard on Marquette radio station WUPT 100.3 FM The Point, or follow the action @NMU_MensBBALL and @NMU_Wildcats on X (formerly Twitter) and @nmu_mbb on Instagram for updates. Or fans can head to the Northern athletics website at nmuwildcats.com and look under the men’s basketball schedule for links to ticket information, live video, live statistics, game notes and a preview.

NMU Sports Information reminds fans that separate tickets are required to see both playoff games today, the No. 4 seeded Northern women taking on No. 5 Michigan Tech in the opener at 5:30 p.m.

If either or both Northern teams win today, they’ll be right back in action on Saturday for their respective semis and Sunday for the tourney title tilt.

Technically, the Wildcat men only finished with a share of the GLIAC title, winning the No. 1 seed on the second tiebreaker against co-champ Michigan Tech. The Upper Peninsula rivals split their games in the regular season, but NMU had a better record vs. the top team in the league not involved in the tie, Grand Valley State — Northern was 1-1 vs. the Lakers while Tech was 0-2.

So Northern had to have both wins last week, a 100-87 race past Roosevelt on Thursday and 98-75 bludgeoning of Wisconsin-Parkside on Saturday.

It clinched a fourth consecutive GLIAC championship for NMU between regular season and tournament titles. The Wildcats won the tourney title a year ago, the regular season in 2023-24 and again the tourney in 2022-23.

Graduate student and top league scorer Dylan Kuehl not only set a career high in points last week, but he did it twice, scoring what was then a career-high 36 vs. Roosevelt before his follow-up 41 vs. Parkside.

Not too surprisingly, he was named GLIAC Offensive Player of the Week on Monday.

He made 70% of his shots between the two games, 28 of 40, and hit 4 of 7 on 3-pointers each day, not even to mention sinking 13 of 14 free throws, 93% success there. Over the pair of contests, he snagged 16 rebounds, dished out nine assists and blocked three shots, the latter stat all coming on Saturday when no other player on either team had even one block.

For the season, he’s at 21.3 points per game, a top-15 number in NCAA Division II. In the GLIAC, he finished at 23.8 ppg to lead all players by more than 2 1/2 points, shooting 59% from the field as No. 2, 1.5 blocks a game to be No. 3, and 6.4 rebounds to rank No. 10.

Just for good measure, his career 2,089 points already ranks him No. 3 all-time for NMU men, trailing No. 2 Cory Brathol of the late 1990s by only 21 points and No. 1 all-time scorer Bill Harris of the mid-1980s by 135.

He’s also been named to newest Top 15 Watch List for the Trevor Hudgins Award, which he began on the top-25 list about a month ago. It’s an award sponsored by the Small College Basketball and National Awards Committee, and the final 15 also includes MTU star Marcus Tomashek, the reigning GLIAC Player of the Year.

As a team, the Wildcats lead the nation with a plus-11.1 rebound margin, are second with a 1.86 assist-to-turnover ratio, fourth with a plus-17.8 scoring margin, 11th with a 38.9% 3-point success rate and 16th by allowing 65.3 ppg.

Northern’s Cal Klesmit carries a large part of the 3-point success, finishing third in the conference with 2.9 per game and first in percentage at 45.5% on those long-range shots.

Teammate Jackson Dudek, at 12.3 ppg, has a 43.3% career 3-point percentage to rank sixth among all players in the nation with 80 or more attempts. He’s also the reigning GLIAC Tournament MVP.

Looking at Ferris, the Bulldogs have lost five straight, three of them coming to each of the U.P.’s GLIAC members. Ferris is 3-10 on the road this season, despite having five players score in double figures — Tae Boyd at 13.3 ppg, Mykel Bingham at 13.0 ppg, Tyler Hamilton at 12.9 ppg, Donovan Brown-Boyd at 12.3 ppg and Chang Hoth at 11.3 ppg.

And while allowing a league second-worst 79.0 ppg, the Bulldogs rank second nationally in 3-point percentage defense at 28.2%.

Story contents based on Northern Michigan University Sports Information press release previewing the game. Journal Sports Editor Steve Brownlee’s email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.