Correspondent photo / Robert Hayes. Youngstown State defensive back Makai Shahid runs with the ball after intercepting Indiana State quarterback Keegan Patterson on Saturday at Stambaugh Stadium.

YOUNGSTOWN — The year the Youngstown State football team last won at Northern Iowa, the first Blackberry was released, the first Matrix movie released, music-sharing platform Napster launched, Serena Williams won the first of her 23 Grand Slam titles and the world was worried about the upcoming Y2K bug at the turn of the new millennium.

In order to ensure itself the best odds of landing a spot in the upcoming FCS playoffs, YSU will have to do something that it hasn’t done in more than 25 years.

The Penguins close out the regular season on Saturday at 2 p.m. in the UNI Dome at Northern Iowa, where YSU hasn’t won since 1999 when Jim Tressel was the head coach.

“In my team meeting today, I said, ‘I’m just going to say it,’ No matter where in the Missouri Valley, we haven’t been fortunate in any dome, not just the UNI Dome,” head coach Doug Phillips said of YSU’s long drought at UNI. “So for us, it’s about execution. It’s about having the right mindset of battling for 60-plus minutes, playing four quarters, playing with great fundamentals so that practice execution becomes game reality.

“Whether you’re playing on a carpet, in a dome, in a gymnasium or in the backyard, you gotta come ready to play. … I think Dathan (Hickey) was the one who said, ‘They may want to win this game, but we need to win this game.’ And we’ve gotta go with the same mentality. It’s going to be a dogfight. We’ve earned the right to play for something here the last week of the year, and our job is to make sure we go and represent, not only Youngstown State, but this community.”

When the Penguins faced the Panthers last year at Stambaugh Stadium, YSU escaped with a 39-38 victory in overtime to finish the season.

Northern Iowa scored a touchdown and PAT in the extra period. But when the Penguins answered with a touchdown, they opted to go for two and converted to secure the victory.

That win propelled YSU into the offseason with some momentum and gave the Penguins something to build off of heading into this season.

“Some forget, but last year, going into Week 12, we were a 3-8 football team,” Phillips said. “The focus our kids put into that game, understanding what a win can do to give you momentum into the offseason. So we’ve been on that side, and I know our kids were ready to play, and they were ready to play against Northern Iowa. They were going to find a way last year to get that overtime win so we could traject ourselves to where we are now.”

A win on Saturday would put YSU at 8-4 overall, 5-3 in the Missouri Valley Football Conference and on the precipice of its second playoff appearance in three years. In that position, it would also be in contention for a top-16 seed and a first-round home playoff game.

“The entire offseason — winter, lifting, spring ball, summer — this is all what you work towards, the chance to win a game and get into the playoffs,” quarterback Beau Brungard said. “There’s so much excitement and confidence that we’ve built up throughout the season. We’re super excited to attack this game and just let it loose. You can’t play worried or fearful. You just have to play confident and just trust in the coaching and trust in your technique that you’ve practiced all year.”

The Penguins are on the bubble for an at-large bid with fellow MVFC teams South Dakota State, North Dakota and possibly Southern Illinois.

The Jackrabbits and Fighting Hawks face each other this weekend in a game where the winner could be in the playoff field and the loser could be out. The Salukis are likely out of the bracket at this point since they have no ranked wins this season and would need a ton of help to have a chance of making the field.

As conference champions, North Dakota State has clinched the league’s autobid, while Illinois State and South Dakota should each be in the field with their respective resumes and are in contention for seeds.

Still, how some of the defining matchups in other conference games on Saturday could determine the number of MVFC teams in the field.

Should an upset happen in some of those de facto conference title matchups, that would create a bid stealer that could take away one of the MVFC’s playoff spots.

“You gotta focus on what you can control,” Phillips said.

As things stand, the MVFC looks like it will have five teams in the field: NDSU, Illinois State, South Dakota, YSU and the UND/SDSU winner. But the Penguins have to take care of business against the Panthers, or else they might find themselves on the outside looking in.

“It’s certainly very exciting. To be able to put yourself in an opportunity to play for playoffs is a blessing,” defensive end Mike Voitus said. “But we also know that it’s not going to take us going out and doing something that we haven’t done before. We need to be ourselves. We don’t need to start doing a bunch of different things that get us out of who we are as players and as coaches. We need to be us, and as authentically us as possible.”