Following what North Idaho College women's basketball coach Chris Carlson called the toughest road trip of the season, his 12th-ranked Cardinals team, along with the NIC men's team will hit the road again for one night only this week.

That game will take place tonight on the campus of archrival Southern Idaho in Twin Falls.

This is NIC's only conference trip to Twin Falls. NIC and CSI played Jan. 14 in Coeur d'Alene, and will play at NIC again Feb. 25.

"It will be a good challenge," Carlson said. "It's always fun to go down there. I like having the focus on just one game. It's the real deal and doesn't get much better than those games. We'll be jacked up and ready to go."

This is the third straight weekend on the road for the NIC teams, which played at Utah State University-Eastern Utah and at Colorado Northwestern two weekends ago.

Women: After winning for the first time at Salt Lake last Friday by a 67-51 score, the Scenic West Athletic Conference-leading Cardinals (17-3, 6-1) fell to Snow in overtime 68-65 in Ephraim on Saturday.

“That’s been our toughest trip of the year,” Carlson said. “We went back and forth on whether to get up early and travel to get a shootaround or sleep in and let the players rest. The problem is if you go early, you don’t have a hotel to go back to and end up sitting around for three hours with nothing to do.”

During the trip, NIC stays at a hotel in Salt Lake City after the Salt Lake game and travels 117 miles (one-way) to Ephraim to play Snow the next day, and returns right after the game. During games at Colorado Northwestern in Rangley, Colo., and Utah State-Eastern Utah in Price, Utah, the team travels 221 miles one-way and flies out of the airport in Salt Lake City. NIC often plays those trips on back-to-back days, while teams coming to Coeur d’Alene often get a travel day in between Thursday-Saturday games.

“I think what’s tough is that when the Utah schools come up, they get a travel day in between,” Carlson said. “When we go to Utah, we could get stuck going to Colorado 3 1/2 hours over the summit and come in and play. I know it was tough on the men, too, the last time.”

The shorter trip to Twin Falls will allow the Cardinals more of a chance to prepare, instead of spending three hours traveling.

“We’ll go down on Friday and actually get a practice in on their floor,” Carlson said. “It will be a shorter flight and it’s only one game, so we can focus all our energy into this game.”

Freshman Angela Woods missed last Saturday’s game at Snow after taking an inadvertant elbow to the head from teammate Ashleigh Kelman-Poto against Salt Lake. Carlson said she should be available tonight.

NIC beat CSI 67-66 at home on Jan. 14. CSI is 10-12, 2-5.

Men: NIC slipped from the NJCAA rankings after losses at Salt Lake and Snow College last weekend, and are on a three-game losing skid.

“It’s been a tough couple of weeks,” NIC men’s coach Jared Phay said. “It starts to wear on you, but it’s something we’ve got to do.”

Sophomore Petar Joksimovic will be out of the lineup again this weekend with an achillies injury and freshman post Edrico McGregor will be a game-time decision after tweaking his left hamstring during practice on Wednesday.

NIC had opened a one-game lead in the SWAC following a win over the Golden Eagles on Jan. 14, but have dropped three of four games to fall two games back of CSI.

“I think we’ve got to focus on the little things,” Phay said. “I don’t feel like we’ve been playing with as much defensive energy right now. I really don’t think it has anything to do with the travel, it’s more of our mindset. That second day of the road trip, it’s tough to get that energy — but that first night, there’s no excuse for it.”

CSI (20-2, 6-1) leads both NIC (18-4, 4-3) and Salt Lake by two games in the SWAC. CSI’s Fabyon Harris is second in the league in scoring at 17 points per game. Luke Cothron is fifth with 15.7 points and second with 8.8 rebounds a game.

Tonight’s games can be viewed via webcast by visiting www.nicathletics.com. Live stats are available at www.athletics.csi.edu.