DEKALB, Ill. – The No. 7 seed Northern Illinois University men's basketball team will begin play in the 2023 Mid-American Conference Tournament on Thursday afternoon, March 9, when it meets No. 2 seed Kent State in the quarterfinals at approximately 3 p.m. CT at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland, Ohio. 

Thursday's contest will be available on ESPN+, along with 94-9 WDKB and The Varsity Network app. 

NIU will be playing its first MAC Tournament game since 2019 when the Huskies take the floor against the Golden Flashes on Thursday. In 2020, NIU earned the No. 4 seed but did not see action before the tournament was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Huskies did not reach the tournament in each of the past two seasons. 

Third Team All-MAC selection David Coit (Columbus, N.J.) leads the Huskies in scoring at 15.7 points per game, 12th-best in the MAC. He is also averaging 2.8 triples per contest, third-best in the conference and 42nd nationally. Kaleb Thornton (Bolingbrook, Ill.) earned All-MAC Honorable Mention recognition after leading the league in conference play in both assists (6.7 per game) and steals (2.2 per game). 

Last time out, NIU closed the regular season with an 85-66 victory over Eastern Michigan (March 3) to finish the league slate at 9-9. Zarique Nutter (Newark, N.J.) scored a team-high 19 points while Thornton finished with 17 points and 11 assists. Nutter is averaging 15.7 points per game over the last nine contests, scoring in double figures in eight of those nine games.  

Kent State heads to Cleveland with a 25-6 overall record, 15-3 in league play. First team all-league selection Sincere Carry leads the Golden Flashes with 17.4 points per game, Malique Jacobs adds 12.6 points per contest and Miryne Thomas chips in 10.2 points per game. Kent State has the seventh-best turnover margin in the nation at +4.5, committing just 11.6 turnovers per game while forcing 16.1 turnovers per contest. 

The Huskies and Golden Flashes met just once this season, an 86-76 NIU victory on Jan. 24, in DeKalb. Coit scored a career-high 32 points in the contest, Thornton added 13 points and 11 assists while Harvin Ibarguen (Cali, Colombia) chipped in 11 points. 

This will be the third all-time MAC Tournament meeting between NIU and Kent State. The Golden Flashes won each of the previous two, in the first round in 2009 in Cleveland (64-41) and the first round at Kent State in 2018 (61-59). 

The winner of Thursday's NIU-Kent State quarterfinal will advance to face the winner of the Akron-Buffalo quarterfinal on Friday night, March 10, at 6:30 p.m. at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.