DEKALB, Ill. – The Northern Illinois University men's soccer team returns to the field on Saturday night, Oct. 22, when the Huskies host Bowling Green on Homecoming weekend. Game time against the Falcons is scheduled for 7 p.m., at the NIU Soccer Complex.

At Saturday's contest the Huskies will honor members of the 2006 and 2011 MAC Championship teams that will be in attendance.

"It is a big game, as all of our MAC games are," said NIU head coach Eric Luzzi. "We know that Bowling Green is a very good team. They do a very good job not to beat themselves and they have a bit of a unique shape so we have trained on how we will approach that. I have been really happy with the last couple of days of training and I think we are in a good place mentally and physically.

"This is a five year and 10-year anniversary of our last two conference championship teams and it will be awesome to honor some of those guys that are able to make it back and we hope that our current team will have a great performance with them in attendance."

NIU (1-8-4) dropped a 2-0 decision to 15th-ranked Loyola on Tuesday night (Oct. 18), the match was NIU's second consecutive against a ranked opponent as the Huskies also fell to then No. 23 Akron last Saturday (Oct. 15) in conference play.

Bowling Green comes to DeKalb with an 8-4-2 overall record, 1-0-1 in league play. The Falcons fell at 18th-ranked Kentucky, 1-0, on Tuesday (Oct. 18) and played to a 1-1 draw last Saturday (Oct. 15) against Western Michigan in conference action. Pat Flynn leads Bowling Green in scoring with 12 points (four goals and four assists) while Anthony Mwembia has seen the majority of the action in goal, he has a 0.58 goals against average and a .857 save percentage.  

With four points in the MAC, Bowling Green currently sits in second place, two points behind conference-leading Akron. NIU is currently in fifth with one point, just a point behind Western Michigan for the final spot in the conference tournament.

Last season, NIU earned a 1-0 overtime victory at Bowling Green (Oct. 3, 2015) as Giovanni Garcia scored in the 97th minute to lead the Huskies past the Falcons.

Next Friday, Oct. 28, the Huskies will travel to Buffalo for their final road match of the regular season. Game time against the Bulls is scheduled for 6 p.m. CT.