Upsetting fifth ranked Notre Dame was a huge challenge for the Northern Illinois University football team. With that now accomplished, getting past the emotions of that win and all of the national attention that sprung from it is the next challenge. The Huskies open MAC play Saturday by hosting Buffalo. The Huskies say they’ll be ready.

It was the highest of highs for NIU’s football program ten days ago in South Bend. The biggest win in the program’s history. It would be easy for the Huskies to let that win go to their heads. They’re convinced it hasn’t and it won’t.

“You see that all the time where people get on their high horse or whatever, and they let things go to their head, but us, that’s not the culture of our program,” said NIU cornerback JaVaughn Byrd.

NIU head coach Thomas Hammock believes that the players will have an easier time resetting from the Notre Dame win than the fans and the media will have. He says that’s because NIU’s players knew they had a shot to win that game, so it wasn’t as big of a shock to them.

“Yea, I guess it was an eye-opener for everybody else. It wasn’t an eye-opener for us. To say it was an eye-opener, that would be disrespect to our football team. We’ve got a good football team that expects to go out there and compete at a high level.

“For us our expectation is to win plain and simple, said NIU quarterback Ethan Hampton. “We have it right there on our wall. It’s 1-0. We weren’t super surprised that we won that game because of the preparation that we put in beforehand.”

Hammock says what he’s seen on the practice field since the Notre Dame game is proof enough that his guys are in the right frame of mind to move forward.

“They’ve moved on. I can tell you last week’s Wednesday practice was the most physical practice we’ve had in a long time.”

As for NIU’s national ranking, sitting at #23 this week in the AP Poll, Hammock says that’s not even a topic of discussion as far as he’s concerned.

“I haven’t even mentioned it to our players to be honest with you because it doesn’t matter. That’s somebody else’s opinion about you that don’t know anything about us.”

The biggest spinoff that the Huskies are hoping to get from that Notre Dame victory is to see these stands packed with fans come Saturday. They say they’d give anything to see a sellout crowd here.”

“I hope it’s a soldout Huskie Stadium,” said Hammock. “I feel like they’ve got a lot of tickets sold already, and hopefully we have a lot more people engaged . That makes a tremendous advantage for our football team. It creates energy.”