Fun Facts: Northern Illinois-Iowa basketball

How not to sell out Carver-Hawkeye Arena: Play a game on the night before Thanksgiving and have the opponent be Northern Illinois.

That doesn't mean there can't be Fun Facts, though. We're not without mirth, are we? So ... here they are:

1. Northern Illinois is 2-0, with wins over Aurora and Idaho. Aurora, a Division III program, lost 63-56 to St. Francis (Ill.) Saturday at the Carthage College Classic. That game counts in the won-lost record for D-I Northern Illinois, but not for Aurora. Go figure.

2. The Huskies are 27-68 under coach Mark Montgomery. Last season they were 15-17, their best record since they went 17-11 in 2005-06. NIU's record over the previous seven seasons was 67-153.

3. NIU's last NCAA appearance was in 1996. But as a Michigan State assistant coach to Tom Izzo in the nine years before he came to DeKalb, Montgomery was part of 19 NCAA tourney wins. He played at MSU from 1988 to 1992.

4. The Huskies have played two home games, before a total of 1,984 fans. The attendance for their Mid-American Conference tournament win over Bowling Green in DeKalb last March 10 was 941. And it was the first time NIU hosted a MAC tourney game since 2003.

5. NIU's scoring leader two seasons ago was Abdel Nader, who averaged 13.1 points per game. He transferred to Iowa State after that season and made his Cyclones debut Monday night.

6. Iowa leads the series with the Huskies, 6-0. The last meeting was three years ago, an 88-55 Hawkeyes rout in Carver-Hawkeye. Nader had a game-high 18 points. It didn't come close to offsetting Iowa's 13-of-21 shooting from 3-point distance.

7. The Huskies have transfers from Purdue, Kansas State and Illinois State.

8. Since Montgomery became NIU's basketball coach, its football team is 44-9. Since Fran McCaffery became Iowa's basketball coach, the Hawkeyes' football team is 34-28.

9. Last week, Northern Illinois' Dan Gebo was named Illinois' Professor of the Year.

10. Many Iowans only know DeKalb by this.But that city has a very famous product named Cindy Crawford.