UNI loses to Belmont, ends up 8th seed for Arch Madness

CEDAR FALLS — Belmont outlasted Northern Iowa and spoiled the Panthers regular season men’s basketball home finale, 83-75, Sunday at McLeod Center.

Trailing 38-36 at halftime, UNI’s all too familiar defensive breakdowns piled up in the first six-plus minutes of the second half, as the Bruins put together a 21-4 run.

“Most of the plays that are hurting us right now, the mistakes that we’re making are at the defensive end,” UNI Coach Ben Jacobson said. “There is frustration in that for our players, for all of us. We were able to get a lot of that stuff cleaned up in January and we haven’t been as good defensively in the month of February.

“A lot of good things happened today, but we have got to play better defense.”

Using a lineup of Bowen Born, Trey Campbell, Landon Wolf, Drew Daniel and James Betz, the Panthers engineered a comeback with an 18-4 run. An up-and-under driving layup from Wolf punctuated the outburst with 6:09 remaining, tying the score at 65.

Despite losing its large lead, Belmont (21-10, 14-6) preserved its chances at a first-round bye in next weekend’s Missouri Valley Conference tournament, taking advantage of nine trips to the free-throw line to outscore UNI 18-10 in the final six minutes.

“I feel like we fought pretty hard, we (were) just making some dumb mistakes (and) not executing our game plan sometimes on offense, but mostly on defense,” Wolf said. “Yeah, we’re young and we’re making the same mistake over and over again, which is really frustrating for ourselves obviously. But, obviously our coach, too.”

Fourteen of Wolf’s career-high 21 points helped UNI (13-17, 9-11) keep pace with the Bruins in the first half. However, Wolf’s productive bench minutes were matched by Belmont’s Ja’Kobi Gillespie, who also scored 14 in the half and finished with a career-high 24.

“Just his feel and understanding is really good, and his confidence is great,” Jacobson said of Wolf. “So that allows him to get into a 3, that allows him to turn the corner, because he’s a half-step ahead of that stuff knowing what coverage they’re in (and) knowing what defender is where. He’s playing his best right now.”

Michael Duax and Born joined Wolf in double figures with 12 and 11 points, respectively.

Keishawn Davidson and Cade Tyson joined Gillespie in double figures for Belmont, scoring 17 and 15, respectively.

Up next for UNI is a first round Missouri Valley Conference tournament game. With the MVC’s expansion to 12 teams this season, the tournament now includes just four first-round byes, whereas previously six of the conference’s 10 teams did not play Thursday night first-round games.

The Panthers will receive the tournament’s No. 8 seed and tip off at noon Thursday against Illinois State (10-20, 5-14) or Valparaiso (11-19, 5-14).

“It’s one of the things I’ve talked about with this league for a long time — is teams in this league, players (and) coaches, they keep fighting (and) they keep coming no matter what their record is. And I think we’re going to see a lot of that come Thursday,” Jacobson said. “If we can play a little harder defensively, I think our guys feel like we can find a way to play with or beat anybody in our league.”