UNI playing its best basketball entering Arch Madness as Panthers seek end to 8-year NCAA Tournament drought

CEDAR FALLS — The Northern Iowa men’s basketball team hopes to return to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in eight years when it tips off a Missouri Valley Conference Tournament quarterfinal Friday.

While the Panthers (18-13, 12-8) don’t enter this season’s conference tournament as the favorite, they do begin “Arch Madness” playing their best basketball of the season, winning five of their last six games.

“Every coach in the Valley that’s been around knows that the Panthers are geared to peak this time of year and you don’t want to play them now,” ESPN and Bally Sports TV analyst Kevin Lehman told The Gazette. “(UNI Coach Ben) Jacobson has been around (and) he knows this usually comes down to three games in St. Louis to punch your ticket (to the NCAA Tournament) and he gears his whole season toward that, and we’ve seen it, they are playing as good as anybody in the league right now.”

UNI’s eight-year absence from the NCAA Tournament is something its players are aware of and hoping to end.

A 25-6 record in the 2019-20 season may have had the Panthers’ current absence cut in half, but the COVID-19 pandemic began before a selection show could take place.

“We try not to think too much about that (absence) because we are our own team, and we definitely want that for ourselves, but we know how it’s been a few years and of course there’s nothing we want more than to play in the NCAA Tournament,” UNI senior forward Cole Henry said. “March Madness has been a dream of mine since I was a little kid watching it.”

UNI’s 82-70 win in its regular-season finale at Southern Illinois last Sunday secured the tournament’s 4-seed and fourth and final first-round bye that comes with it.

The win against the Salukis also provided a useful postseason environment.

“I didn’t talk to the team about it, but I had thought about that — this is really the start of postseason (play) for us,” Jacobson said. “There’s going to be another level of intensity, but this (game) was a high level.”

UNI’s win against SIU also included another statistical demonstration of its late-season emphasis to play harder and faster, scoring 18 fast-break points, the most allowed this season by the Salukis’ top-ranked defense in the MVC.

“When you play fun basketball it becomes addicting. We got that first taste of what it was like to run and gun like this and play with supreme confidence in each other (and) it’s addicting,” Henry said. “You want to keep doing it. You want more, and we want more.”

An 86-61 win by Belmont (20-12, 12-8) over Valparaiso in Thursday’s first round sets up a rubber match between the Bruins and Panthers, who split their two regular-season games. Tip-off at Enterprise Center is at 2:30 p.m. Friday (ESPN+).

Jacobson had his team going back to fundamental drills to prepare for tournament play.

“Went back to some breakdown drills — block outs, free throw block outs, some crackdown block outs, some rotation stuff in three-on-three situations — kind of three of our four staples, if you will, of drills that we do (in) September, October, November,” Jacobson said.