Defense continues to shine for UNI men

CEDAR FALLS - Northern Iowa men's basketball coach Ben Jacobson is beginning to sound like a broken record.

Once again Sunday, he was singing the praises of a stingy defensive effort by his Panthers, which beat Richmond, 55-50 and held the Spiders to 15 points in the first half.

The rededication to defense and rebounding in practice continues to pay dividends.

'We were terrific in the first half, defensively. I'm going to have to look pretty hard to find more than one or two errors,” Jacobson said. It seemed like we were helping, we rebounded well. That first half was our best defensive effort, and we're coming off two good ones.”

The Panthers moved to 7-0 with the victory - the best start since 1963-64 as a Division II team - and have allowed an opponent more than 60 points just once so far this season. They've held teams to 50 or less three of the last four games.

Defensive efforts like that stem from being committed to physical play, and that was very evident against the Spiders (2-3). Forward Seth Tuttle - who led the team with 17 points and 10 rebounds - said their willingness to be selfless on defense and help each other out is one of the biggest differences between last year and this year.

The same could be said on the other end of the floor for the Panthers, too. Whether it was aggressive man-to-man in the post or tight man-to-man on the perimeter, UNI was forced to work for everything on offense.

'They were banging, especially the second half,” Tuttle said. 'I'd say it's by far the most physical game we've played so far this year. They don't have a big seven-footer, but man those guys were going hard for all the boards and they were going hard in the blocks, trying to push us off and get position.

'We're helping each other out a lot this year. It's a lot different. … We're just locked in a lot more on defense and putting a lot more emphasis on it.”

The single player personification of that has been in guard Jeremy Morgan. Morgan's early-season efforts left Jacobson wanting, but the coach has seen that change drastically since the first game against North Dakota.

Morgan had four points, three rebounds and two blocks, but was all over the floor fighting for loose balls and defending. His impact, he said, has boosted his confidence in knowing he doesn't have to score to affect the team in a positive way. Jacobson agreed.

'He's starting to understand he doesn't have to score points,” Jacobson said. 'He doesn't have to be looking for shots and scoring points. There's going to be nights this year where he gets 15 or 18; he's good enough to do that. If he starts getting 10 or 12 a night, that's fine. But his mindset is shifted to where he needs to be a high-level defender and he needs to be a big-time rebounder. That's going to help our team the most.”

Richmond Coach Chris Mooney lauded UNI's defensive effort as well and said the Panthers forced them into situation they don't like to be in offensively. Despite the physical nature of his team's play, he said 'we'd like to be a physical team, but it's not our preference,” and that 'we're probably best when there's a rhythm to our offense.”

Jacobson, on the other hand, said 'it was, in a lot of ways, what we expected.” The offense that put a scare into North Carolina State last Wednesday showed up in the second half, cutting a 15-point halftime lead to as little as four twice in the second half. The Spiders were able to convert fast-break opportunities they hadn't in the first half, and the Panthers weren't converting when they had previously.

'It felt like we defended pretty well (in the second half). Richmond had a little more flow to their offense,” Jacobson said. 'I think, in part, our offense wasn't quite as good, and that allowed Richmond to get out in transition. We didn't rebound well enough in the second half, they got some second chances. From the eight-minute mark to maybe the two-minute mark, we had some opportunities to keep the game at seven or eight to maybe 10. We had a couple in close, a couple at the free throw line (miss) that allowed the game to get down to four or five points, and they got really aggressive, to their credit.”

In the end, though, the UNI defense stood up when it needed to. A couple key rebounds from Marvin Singleton, a block from Jeremy Morgan and five free throws from Matt Bohannon sealed the victory.

It's belief in each other, Jacobson said, that sparked such an emphatic dedication to defending. Jacobson took blame for not making defense as important as he believes he should've last season, and has gone to great lengths to fix that this year.

From the way he's been repeating himself about good defensive efforts, the players seem to have bought in.

'From a coaching standpoint, you can talk about it. It's more important that you work on it,” Jacobson said of the defense. 'I made a mistake last year in not putting enough time in our defense, and that was on me.

'We've spent a lot of time on it, so it's important that I don't (just) talk about it, (but) that we do it. That helps them. Now we've had some success with it, and that confidence and that belief continues to grow. The most important thing is they have to believe in it, and right now I think they do.”

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