Sean Arbaut/Minot State athletics Minot State's Tyler Rudolph (24) puts up a shot during Saturday's victory over UMary.

A loss won’t completely derail the season. A win doesn’t mean you should make plans for the Division II national championship game.

But make no mistake about it, tonight’s matchup against No. 21 Northern State is the most important game the Minot State men’s basketball team has played in a long time.

The Beavers are 7-0 for the first time in 42 years and have received votes in the Division II Top 25 polls for the first time in program history. They’ve been steamrolling everyone in their path, winning every game by at least 13 points and never trailing in a second half.

A weekend sweep would almost guarantee the Beavers make school history and crack the national Top 25. Simply put, it’s been harder to ever feel better about a MSU men’s basketball team in the past than the Beavers do about themselves right now.

Yet, the matchup with this Northern State team at 8 p.m. tonight at the MSU Dome provides an entirely different challenge than anything the Beavers have seen so far. NSU has always been a boogeyman of sorts since the Beavers’ transition to Division II, with the Wolves winning all 10 contests against MSU in the last five years. If the Beavers want to make a statement to the rest of the league Friday, they’re going to have to clear a hurdle that’s been tripping them repeatedly the last half decade.

“It’s been that way not because we’re losing to bad teams, they’ve just been really good,” MSU coach Matt Murken said. “They’ve just been better than us. We’ve had some great games with them and now it’s up to us to figure out a way to be better than we have then. I know the next time we play them, the past doesn’t have anything to do with it, we just have to execute better than they do.”

Coming off a 22-8 season, the Wolves were selected as the preseason favorite to win the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference and are arguably better now than they were a year ago. NSU’s (6-1) only loss has been a 71-60 defeat to defending national champion and No. 1 Northwest Missouri State.

They Wolves are incredibly difficult to score on, as they allow the fewest points per game in the NSIC at 60.1. MSU is only one spot behind, giving up 61.3 per night. The Beavers also have the best scoring margin per game in the conference (plus 25.1) and are first in assist-to-turnover ratio (1.55).

“There’s similarities between our teams,” NSU coach Paul Sather said. “We’re built from the inside-out, both teams take pride in how they’re defending and they love to guard. They’re extremely efficient offensively and they’re playing at a high level. We’re still searching for our offense and have really relied a lot on our defense so far. We’ve had stretches of success on offense but haven’t put a complete effort and we haven’t taken care of the ball the way they have.”

The Wolves have two players taller than trees in 6-foot-8 forward Logan Doyle and 6-foot-10 center Carter Evans. Doyle (9.9 points per game) and Evans (11.7) are both serious inside scoring threats and will have a distinct height advantage over any MSU player that averages more than 10 minutes a game.

Doyle in particular terrorized the Beavers last year, scoring 23 points in Aberdeen and 25 points on a 9 of 11 shooting effort in Minot.

Meanwhile, junior guard Ian Smith leads the Wolves in scoring with 11.9 points per contest and senior 6-foot-4 guard DJ Pollard is their third player averaging double figures (10.3).

“This is just a really good team,” Murken said. “They took Arizona State into double overtime in an earlier exhibition, which is obviously a pretty good basketball program. NSU runs multiple 6-foot-10 guys at you and their backup is really good but doesn’t get to play much because their starter is so good. He could be the best big guy in the league.

“And those guys can make you forget how good their guards are. They’re just really solid all around. They’re a little like us, if you pay too much attention to one guy, they have multiple other guys that can take advantage of that and make you pay. I’ll have my work cut out for me preparing for that one.”

While it may seem all doom and gloom on paper, the Beavers only lost to the Wolves by a combined 10 points in two games in the 2016-2017 season and are much better defensively this year. They also have a matchup problem for NSU in 6-foot-6 senior forward Tyler Rudolph. Rudolph scored 27 points against the Wolves in Aberdeen and 30 points in Minot, so it’s not like NSU’s size and length took MSU’s biggest offensive weapon out of the game. In seven games, Rudolph is averaging nearly 24 points and eight rebounds per game while shooting 63 percent from the floor.

“I don’t know if we have anyone that can go get you 40 like they do,” Sather said. “But we do have plenty that can go get you 10 or 15. Our bigs inside can really impact games, but they’ve also shown they can struggle when people pay a lot of attention to them.”

The last time MSU beat a ranked opponent was last season on Nov. 9 against then-No. 21 Augustana at the MSU Dome.

After the showdown with NSU, MSU faces last year’s NSIC champion in MSU Moorhead (2-4) at 6 p.m. Saturday at the MSU Dome.

“It’s a big week for us,” Rudolph said. “Those have been the two top teams ever since I’ve been here. We have to prepare during the week, then be ready to beat them.”

Garrick Hodge covers Minot State athletics, the Minot Minotauros and high school sports. Follow him on Twitter @Garrick_Hodge.