The Northern Illinois University women’s basketball team opens its final road trip of the regular season on Saturday, March 2 with a 2 p.m. CT game at Akron. The game will be broadcast on ESPN+ as well as locally on WDKB 94-9 and the NIU Huskies and Varsity Network apps.

NIU (13-14, 6-9 MAC) will play its final three games of the regular season on the road. This is the first time since the 1996-97 season that the Huskies close the year with three successive road contests. NIU has won its last two road contests, defeating Eastern Michigan 61-52 on Feb. 17 and Buffalo 66-57 on Feb. 21.

Jayden Marable (Bolingbrook, Ill./Bolingbrook) led NIU in scoring Wednesday night with a game-high 19 points, adding six rebounds and four assists. In the month of February Marable averaged 13.4 points, 5.3 rebounds and 4.0 assists per game over seven games. The senior guard leads NIU in scoring at 11.9 points per game, nearly doubling her scoring average of 6.5 points per game a year ago.

NIU is second in the Mid-American Conference in rebounding at 40.37 per game, leading the league with 29.4 defensive rebounds per game. The Huskies are 18th in the nation in defensive rebounds entering play on Saturday. NIU outrebounded Toledo 41-34 on Wednesday after being outrebounded by the Rockets by 14 in the first meeting on Jan. 24. Four Huskies had at least five rebounds in that game led by Brooke Stonebraker’s (Versailles, Ohio/Versailles) nine. Stonebraker has had at least nine rebounds in each of the last seven games and is second in the MAC in rebounding at 9.2 rebounds per game.

The Huskies are tied for seventh place in the MAC with Ohio with three games to go. NIU holds the tiebreaker over the Bobcats with its 67-62 win at Ohio on Jan. 10. Akron is 4-11 in the league, two games behind NIU and Ohio. The Zips lost at Ball State 75-41 last Wednesday, Akron’s fourth loss in the last five games. Junior forward Reagan Bass led Akron with 12 points and six rebounds. She leads the MAC in rebounding at 10.1 per game and also has a league-leading 13 double-doubles. Akron won the first meeting between the two teams 61-59 at the NIU Convocation Center on Jan. 27. NIU has won the last four meetings against the Zips at James A. Rhodes Arena.

After Saturday’s game, NIU goes to Miami on Wednesday, March 6. Tip-off at Millett Hall is at 6 p.m. CT.