“(Northern Illinois is) a pretty good team, and if we start thinking ahead to Saturday, we could very easily lose on Friday,” Minkel said. “So our first task is we need to be aware and prepared for Iowa when it comes, but it’s very important for us to take care of business Friday night.”

In their only prior meeting, MSU defeated the Huskies, 28-6, at the Spartan Duals in January, but the Spartans got a taste of Northern Illinois (1-2) at the MSU Open on Nov. 13, where only individuals competed. No. 13 157-pound junior David Cheza and 149-pound Dan Osterman both came out with victories over their Northern Illinois opponents.

Cheza defeated No. 19 157-pound Bryan Deutsch in a 4-1 decision, while Osterman took down the Huskies’ 149-pound Vince Castillo, 4-0.

“The kid I’m going to have to wrestle – I know he’s a good kid,” Osterman said. “He beat me last year, but I beat him this year, and they’ve both been really close matches. It’s definitely going to be a good dual before going into the Iowa match.”

Having a quick turnover traveling to Iowa City, Iowa, Osterman said his team hopefully will hold onto its competitive mentality going into its first conference match, especially after the Spartans fell 37-0 to Iowa last season.

With eight of the Hawkeyes’ 10 wrestlers in the top 20 of their respective weight classes, Minkel said their consistently solid program will help MSU gauge where it stands against conference competition. Minkel is transferring the mentality of one dual at a time to one individual matchup at a time because the momentum building up to the night could get out of control.

“We have to take care of business one weight class at a time,” he said. “It’s easy in a situation like this to be thinking about the bigger picture: We want to win the dual; they’re defending national champs; their tradition and all that.

“What we have to do is stay focused on the small things, which is the first guy winning the first match, and the next guy winning the next match.”

Competition aside, MSU also will have to battle the Hawkeyes’ rowdy crowd.

“We’ve got to stay focused because the venue at Iowa is known as one of the most high-energy places for wrestling,” 197-pound junior Tyler Dickenson said. “(We) need to look at it as not something to be intimidated by, but to feed off of and approach it like that and use it to (our) advantage.”

Regardless of whom they face this weekend, Dickenson said if they maintain the right attitude, the Spartans should come out on top.

“You’ve got to respect everybody, and you’ve got to compete no matter who’s on the mat,” he said. “So it really doesn’t matter what’s happened in the past or anything.

“It’s just that you’re going to go out and wrestle whoever steps out on the mat.”