Hlas: Only the ending wasn’t great about UNI’s season

SEATTLE - There was a nice buffet set up in Northern Iowa's KeyArena locker room after the Panthers' NCAA basketball tournament game Sunday night.

Grilled chicken, salad, rolls, cookies - it all went untouched. Appetites were nonexistent.

UNI senior guard Deon Mitchell hung out on a bench between the dressing room and restroom, alone in his thoughts. Classmate Marvin Singleton had a towel over his head for the entire time reporters were allowed in the room, unable or unwilling to talk about the Panthers' 66-53 loss to Louisville.

Senior All-America Seth Tuttle shed plenty of tears. Junior Matt Bohannon gamely answered questions, but his voice quivered and his face showed he had wept a bit himself.

This team believed this tournament run was going to be extended to later this week in Syracuse, maybe the week after at the Final Four in Indianapolis.

'It sucks,” Tuttle said. 'That's the best way I can describe it. It's terrible. It's not fun at all.”

The Panthers never got a handle on this game they way they got on top of opponent after opponent in this 31-4 season. Louisville played better defense than defense-minded UNI, and sophomore guard Terry Rozier took a star turn with 25 points and 7 assists.

This was no big upset. The Cardinals were the No. 4 seeds, the Panthers No. 5. Las Vegas made UNI a slight favorite, but Rick Pitino's team isn't going to its fourth-straight Sweet 16 because it's lucky.

'We were good out of the gates, and (then) we got stuck a little bit,” UNI Coach Ben Jacobson said. 'I needed to get us adjusted to some overload stuff or some things that would get it to the block, as we saw in the second half. We were a better offensive team in the second half, and I just needed to help our guys a little more.”

But, of course, Jacobson didn't lose this game. Louisville was the better team this night. Louisville, Kentucky, Michigan State, Duke, North Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin ... most of the survivors of the weekend are awfully familiar Sweet 16 names, aren't they?

But you'll never be able to tell the Panthers they couldn't or shouldn't have won this game, though everyone paid the Cardinals ample respect.

'There are no what-could-have-beens,” said Jacobson. 'The guys hurt right now because this is a really, really good basketball team. We got beat tonight by a team that played better than we did today.

'But we have a team that's good enough that, on another day, maybe we win this game, and win another one, and win another one because of the things we put into it. We've got a really good team.”

How about Bohannon? He suffered a dislocated left index finger that broke the skin during UNI's 71-54 whipping of Wyoming here Friday, then played 29 minutes and sank two 3-pointers on this huge stage.

'I'm sure after a week or two we'll be happy and proud, and feel good about this season,” Bohannon said. 'In a couple weeks it'll be ‘Wow, we did all this stuff.' But it's just tough to deal with right now.”

Tuttle kept getting better and better in his career, to the point where America got to know his name. To make anybody's second-team All-America out of a mid-major means you played lights out.

'I'm extremely proud of these guys and the name on the front of this jersey,” he said. 'I'm proud of everything. If this is painful, it's because we put a lot into it.

'Tonight, we just couldn't get over the hump.”

Another senior, Nate Buss, was brilliant in the Panthers' Missouri Valley Conference tourney-title run, and had 24 points off the bench over the two games here.

'This is the best group of guys you could possibly ask for teammates to go through a journey like this,” Buss said. 'Nothing can ever replace that.”

It was their coach who had the most upbeat demeanor of anyone in that dressing room. Jacobson is obviously a fine builder of basketball teams, and as competitive as anyone in his profession. He occasionally showed a volcanic side in the second half that we seldom see from him. But he always comes across as a person with perspective and dignity away from the court.

'We lost a basketball game,” he said. 'But the sacrifice and determination and the way in which they handled themselves, those are things that are going to take (his seniors) to heights now that they're gone.”

The Panthers got outplayed, lost, and that's that. Basketball isn't sentimental, and neither is this tournament.

'We accomplished a bunch,” Jacobson said. The better teams always think it should have been more. But the Panthers truly were one of the better teams in America this season, and that will never change.

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