HIGHS AND LOWS AND FROM THE MAC WE GO.

Summer sailing can be an exercise in frustration for the club sailor.  One gets schooled by the local collegiate sailors or perhaps by members with Olympic and America's Cup experience.  Or one simply misses the wind shift that was there for all to see, or a block hangs up at the wrong time.

But there's always that one day when the breeze is smart and everything is working and the hull is on its lines and even if there's not a winning finish to the race, the experience is thrilling enough that you're back for another season.

There are seasons when following the collection of honor students comprising the Lady Huskies is like that.  As conference play got under way, it was all about missing the shift and the blocks hanging up.  "At best, that team is consistently inconsistent and consistently at the bottom of the conference standings.  Enough, academic performance notwithstanding."

Then came the final Saturday in February, with the local kids leading Eastern Michigan, a team that had not yet recorded a conference victory, by ten going into the fourth quarter.  That's a perfect covering situation, all you have to do is trade baskets.  Didn't happen.

The Huskies scored just six points in the fourth quarter, allowing the Eagles to initiate a comeback.

Eastern Michigan junior guard Brooklyn Thrash opened the scoring three minutes into the fourth quarter, chipping away at NIU’s lead with a jumpshot. Thrash played a pivotal role in the Eagles’ comeback, finishing with 8 points in the fourth quarter – including a layup to bring Eastern Michigan within one point late with under a minute remaining.

The first of those points came on a free throw seven minutes into the quarter.

The first Saturday in March, though, was that one day that the hull was on its lines.  Bowling Green had a 21 point lead in the second half, and the local kids made it all up to force overtime.

[Chelby] Koker delivered a fourth-quarter takeover to help the Huskies to a double-overtime win, scoring 10 of her 28 points in the fourth. Koker also delivered a game-tying buzzer beater at the end of regulation to force overtime.

“In the timeout, with the play we were running, I said, ‘wings be ready to shoot,’ because I knew that they were really going to crash in the paint,” Koker said. “And I thought Sidney (McCrea) had an amazing look and that was a great shot and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

The graduate guard iced the game with six consecutive free throws after Bowling Green head coach Fred Chmiel was assessed a technical foul and was ejected from the game late in the second overtime period.

Chmiel, schlemazel.

Whether the team can record a win or two to make it into the conference tournament in Cleveland is yet to be determined.

But that's been the story of Northern Illinois in the Mid-American.

[T]he Northern Illinois return to the Mid-American might have required the team to lift its game.  For all those comparisons in Green Bay with Tennessee's tournament history, let the record show that the one time a Pat Summitt team was one and done, it was Ball State did the done.  Yes, some years the Phoenix have flirted with making the round of sixteen.  And yes, it has taken a long time for Northern Illinois to contend in the Mid-American.

With football moving to the Mountain West, a number of the so-called Olympic sports had to find a new conference.  Tell me it's not about the travel money without telling me about the travel money.

Slowly, the old North Star Conference returns.

As they are in the MAC, the Huskies will become the league’s westernmost member, effective July 1, 2026. NIU will join Cleveland State University, University of Detroit Mercy, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Indiana University Indianapolis, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Northern Kentucky University, Oakland University, Purdue University Fort Wayne, Robert Morris University, Wright State University and Youngstown State University.

When asked if the Horizon League has plans to expand further, commissioner Julie Roe Lach said “there’s no magic number” when it comes to membership.

“It is a very dynamic landscape, so we’re constantly looking at who might be a strong potential candidate should we like to expand, or if there’s healthy attrition that happens,” Lach said.

The move simultaneously marks the end of NIU’s decades-long run as a full member of the MAC – which spanned across two separate stints – and a return to the Horizon League, which it was a member of from 1994 to 1997, when it was named the Midwestern Collegiate Conference.

Green Bay and Milwaukee used to be major rivals in the North Star, as, for a few years, were DePaul and Marquette before their administrations opted to affiliate with the Big East.

Whether any of these realignments have any longevity in a collegiate sports business increasingly looking like four power conferences of sixteen teams is not for me to foresee.