DEKALB, Ill. - The Northern Illinois University women's gymnastics team returns home to host Kent State in the Mid-American Conference opener at the Convocation Center Friday night.

"It's always good to be home," said NIU head coach Sam Morreale. "We love our facility. We love our venue. It's going to be good to get Kent State in here early. They are they cream of the crop as far as the MAC goes. They are one of the better teams so it will be a great measuring stick for us.

"We're going into the meet to win. We're going into the meet to chase qualifying scores for regionals. It's not really a match up sport, but as far as depth and 10.0 start values, we're equal to them. It's just a matter of us proving we can do it, like they have done year in and year out."

The Huskies (1-0) return to action looking to build on a 192.250-189.575 victory in the season opener at UIC last week. Morreale was pleased to start the season with a win, but was even happier with how the team finished at the UIC Pavilion.

"We finished really well at UIC," Morreale said. "We did a good job of putting a bad event behind us and moving on to the rest of the meet."

The victory at UIC also helped show Morreale and his squad areas of improvement. The Huskies spent this past week working on some of those areas in advance of Friday's meet.

"We had an outstanding week of practice, as a far as cleaning up the little things," he said. "For us at this point of the season it's just getting better at what we do and then consistency and hit rates going up. We feel really good about our week of practice and fixing the couple of mistakes we had that first week."

Amanda Stepp, who picked up MAC Gymnast of the Week honors following her performance in the victory at UIC, will lead the way for NIU against the Golden Flashes. The senior from Lapeer, Michigan finished in first place in all three events she competed in, scoring a 9.725 in the vault, a 9.850 in the balance beam and a 9.700 in the floor exercise.

Competition begins at 7 p.m. and admission is free. Fans who cannot make it to the Convocation Center can follow the action live online via NIUHuskies.com. The event will be shown on NIUTube and there will also be live scoring. In addition, fans can follow all the action on Twitter via @NIUscores.com.

-NIU-