The last time the Northwestern volleyball team beat Minnesota, Wildcats head coach Keylor Chan was playing club ball as an undergraduate at Florida, senior Jill Buschur hadn’t even picked up a volleyball yet, and setter Lauren Greenwood was eight.

Ten years and 19 losses later, the Wildcats will get another chance to knock of the Golden Gophers tonight as they go on the road for their first full weekend of Big Ten play. Saturday the Cats take on Iowa(5-7, 0-2 Big Ten), Big Ten bottom-dwellers also in search of its first conference win.

NU (9-5, 0-2) opened its Big Ten schedule last week with two losses against Illinois and No. 20 Wisconsin. Minnesota (7-7, 0-2), last year’s Big Ten champions, also dropped both of its conference openers last week, losing to Indiana and Purdue.

“Minnesota is always quality team,” Senior Erika Lange said. “It doesn’t matter what happened last year, or the last few matches — it’s just two teams going out there really wanting a win.”

The Cats are badly in need of a victory. After winning nine straight, NU has dropped its last three, and two losses this weekend could jeopardize any chances of a Big Ten title.

The Gophers are facing a must-win situation as well. After seven early losses, Minnesota has already eclipsed last year’s total of six. And the perennial powerhouse hasn’t started it’s conference schedule 0-2 since 1993 — the last year it lost to NU.

NU concludes it’s short road trip Saturday with a match in Iowa City, Iowa, to face a struggling Hawkeyes team. Iowa has dropped it’s last three matches and hasn’t won since Sept. 12 when it defeated Duke.

“We need to come out and play Northwestern volleyball,” Lange said. “We know we’re a better team than we’ve shown in the last two matches.”

Lange, a potential All-America candidate, has the fourth-highest hitting percentage in the country. But when she struggles, so does NU. In last week’s losses to Illinois and Wisconsin, the middle blocker had hitting percentages of .100 and .189 — far below her average of .452.

Setter Drew Robertson is another NU player making noise on the national level. The junior is eighth in the country with an average of 13.6 assists per game.

The tandem is a powerful weapon for the Cats, but talent isn’t this year’s problem. Mental mistakes and errors on the court have been the biggest factor impeding NU from accomplishing it’s goals.

“We’ve really buckled down in practice,” Robertson said. “We’re trying to focus on discipline and making sure the game doesn’t get out of hand.”