That Tuttle, that dunk and that big UNI day

CEDAR FALLS - Wichita State coach Gregg Marshall's answers in Saturday's postgame were short and chippy.

His No. 12 Shockers had just been upstaged on a couple of fronts. First, No. 18 Northern Iowa snapped the Shockers' 30-game Missouri Valley Conference winning streak with a dominating 70-54 victory.

The Panthers (20-2, 9-1 MVC) did it on their home court, in front of a rowdy crowd and ultra-amped student section and on ESPN2. They did it against the No. 12 team in the country. It also was the first UNI game that featured two ranked teams.

All of this doesn't happen here very often. It was a big stage (the 7,050 fans at the McLeod Center was the fourth largest crowd in the arena's history) and the Panthers drained it for all it was worth.

'It's hard not to have ‘it,' whatever ‘it' may be,” said UNI forward Seth Tuttle, who hung 29 points and seven rebounds on Wichita State. 'When I say ‘it,' I meant energy and the effort. It's hard not to have that at 100 percent when you've got a crowd like that. They were rocking all night.”

The Panthers drove a 21-3 first-half run to victory and then they ran to the postgame table and told the world about it. That was a breach in the postgame news conference etiquette. Usually, the visiting team goes first. Marshall poked his head through a door to the side of the microphones where Tuttle and guard Wes Washpun spoke. With a snowstorm bearing down, no, Marshall was not happy.

Crocodile tears surely will fall all over the MVC for the coach who had his 30-game conference winning streak snapped (it was 27 straight regular-season games).

'We've won 30 in a row,” Marshall said. 'We've got to start another streak. The best team won today.”

During the game, UNI guard Wes Washpun picked up an and-1 off a layup going toward the UNI student section. The junior from Cedar Rapids Washington nodded his head toward the students. They exploded. Later, Washpun exploded.

You'll see his coast-to-coast dunk on SportsCenter. He took an inbounds, paused and sprinted through the Shockers (19-3, 9-1). He took off from the 'The” of the 'The Valley” logo on UNI's court. He swung on the rim and his knee landed on the chin of WSU's Ron Baker.

Look no farther for the signature play from UNI's 20th victory, which happened to come on the last day in January. Wichita State will snap back. The Shockers have hovered around the nation's top 10 for three seasons. They aren't going anywhere and UNI will go to Wichita for the regular-season finale on Feb. 28.

Wichita State just might not be the Death Star anymore.

'You've got to confidence your coaches, your game-plan and, most of all, each other,” said Washpun, who finished with 16 points. 'We knew how talented our team was, we knew the kind of effort it was going to take. We rallied that all together and gave it our best shot.”

Northern Iowa coach Ben Jacobson gave the student section a wave after the game. He knows UNI has to generate the heat with its play to make the McLeod bleachers come alive the way they did against the Shockers.

'We knew they were a great team and they are,” Tuttle said. 'But we didn't talk about coming in here and beating them by 1 or 2. We talked about coming in here and beating them by 15. That was our mind-set. That's what we were trying to do and we got it done.”

That's throwing it down. Whatever it is.

l Comments: (319) 398-8256; marc.morehouse@thegazette.com