Lakeland College

Muskie women look to hook NAC tourney berth

Athletics - posted on 2/13/2013

The Lakeland College women's basketball team can play its way into the Northern Athletics Conference Tournament if it can defeat Milwaukee School of Engineering tonight at 7 p.m. in Milwaukee in its final regular season game.

The Muskies (11-13 overall, 9-8 conference) are currently one-half game behind Edgewood College for a tie for fourth in the NAC North Division. However, Lakeland will win a tiebreaker over Edgewood with a win, as the two teams split their regular season meeetings but the Muskies swept both games against NAC North runner-up Maranatha Baptist Bible College this year, giving them the better record against a top divisional opponent.

Should Lakeland qualify for the conference tourney, it will likely be as the No. 8 seed of eight teams. Rockford (Ill.) College currently is in the fourth and final tourney spot out of the NAC North and would need to lose tonight to 1-15 Dominican (Ill.) University, while Aurora (Ill.) University would need to beat unbeaten Wisconsin Lutheran College tonight to tie Rockford for fourth. Rockford defeated Lakeland 70-61 on Jan. 19.

Wisconsin Lutheran has clinched the top seed in the tourney, which begins Saturday with quarterfinal games at campus sites. NAC North champion Concordia University Wisconsin has wrapped up the second seed and Maranatha Baptist is the No. 3 seed, with the remaining seeds all still to be decided tonight.

The Muskies defeated MSOE 83-42 back on Nov. 24. The Raiders are 2-21 overall this year, 2-15 in the NAC. A live broadcast of tonight's game including live audio and video will be available from MSOE's athletics website at http://msoe.edu/athletics/broadcasts.shtml.