There are four teams ahead of Wisconsin in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association standings. There are seven teams below the Badgers.

UW’s record against the teams ahead of it stands at 1-6-1, while it owns a 10-1-1 record against the rest of the WCHA.

And now, fresh off a bye week, the Badgers head west to face the Nebraska-Omaha Mavericks, who are two points ahead of them in the standings. History would seem to indicate Wisconsin is headed for trouble at Qwest Center.

But the Badgers are convinced history remains just that.

“Yeah, we’re a completely different team [now],” junior forward Jordy Murray said. “We look back at those games and we weren’t playing great hockey, we were still finding our legs, figuring out the systems. All our young guys now have figured it out.”

Six of those games against top WCHA competition – league-leaders Denver and Minnesota Duluth as well as second-place North Dakota – came early in the season, with the low point being a four-game losing streak to the Fighting Sioux and Bulldogs in November.

But in its second series against UMD, UW managed a road split, back in the middle of January.

“At the beginning of the year some of them were in awe, looking at some of the teams we were playing,” goaltender Scott Gudmandson said. “Now, they’ve come in, worked really hard and we’ve created a good team – we’ve got chemistry with all the guys and that’s really important.”

So now, the Badgers (19-8-3, 11-7-2 WCHA) get a chance to legitimize the improvements they’ve made since November with an important series against the Mavericks (16-10-2, 12-6-2).

UNO will be a relatively unfamiliar foe – this is the Mavericks’ first season in the WCHA, and the Badgers have not played them since the beginning of the 2003-2004 season.

Despite the lack of firsthand experience, game film has filled Wisconsin in on Nebraska-Omaha’s tendencies.

“We watched video of them… We feel like we know them pretty well, they do a lot of the systems that the other teams do in the WCHA,” Murray said. “So everything they’re doing, we’ve seen before, we’re prepared for.”

“They’ve got a big defensive corps and they’ve got a good goaltender, I like their goaltender – he’s very good laterally,” UW head coach Mike Eaves said.

The matchup features two very successful coaches – Eaves took UW to the national title game last season and won it all in 2006, while his counterpart, Dean Blais, won two NCAA titles as head coach of North Dakota.

There are other similarities, as well. Blais’ teams tend to be well-coached, play as a unit and get a lot of pucks at the net, averaging 38 shots on goal per game this season. Sound familiar?

Both teams also got off to hot starts before hitting a rough patch. UNO surprised in its first season of WCHA play by running to a 8-1-1 start and top-five ranking. Wisconsin started 6-2-2, far exceeding early expectations for a young group that lost so much from the prior season.

But since that early success, Nebraska-Omaha is just 8-9-1 and has just two winning streaks since mid-December – both being just two-game streaks.

Meanwhile, after hiccups in November, Wisconsin sat at 7-7-3 and it looked like the overachieving was done. Instead, the Badgers have won 12 of 13 and are riding a five-game unbeaten streak.

It remains to be seen how Wisconsin comes out after a bye week, but momentum won’t weigh heavily on any Badgers’ minds.

“You’ve just got to come in and play 20 minutes at a time, one shift at a time,” defenseman Craig Johnson said. “After a bye, you can either go up or you can stumble against some teams.”

With four weeks left in the season, Wisconsin is five points behind the league lead. Even if every team aside from UNO wins out – UW doesn’t play DU, UMD or UND again in the regular season – Wisconsin can pull ahead of Nebraska-Omaha and fight to secure fourth place and home ice in the WCHA playoffs.

So, even knowing a hostile road environment awaits – UNO is running a “Sell Out Wisconsin” event, trying to fill all 16,680 seats – the Badgers are determined to leave Omaha as winners.

“I’m not thinking about getting three points, I’m thinking about getting four,” Gudmandson said.

“You look at the standings, the WCHA, it says it all: We need these four points. They’re a team that’s two points ahead of us. Every game is a four-point game. A split keeps us at the same place we’re at.”