Northern Iowa loses fourth straight

Northern Iowa continued its January swoon on Saturday, falling to Illinois State, 76-67, at Redbird Arena in Normal, Ill.

It marked the fourth straight loss for UNI (10-11, 2-6 MVC), and sixth loss in the last seven games, all in 2016.

'We are going to have to earn our way out of this,” Northern Iowa Coach Ben Jacobson said on his Learfield postgame radio interview. 'No tricks. We have to keep grinding.”

A Wes Washpun jumper tied the game at 43-43 with 17:48 to play, but Illinois State (11-10, 5-3) countered with a 3-pointer from Mikyle McIntosh.

The Redbirds had 12 3-pointers, including five from Justin McCloud, a reserve who had five 3-pointers in conference play coming into the game.

'We've got to push through that,” Washpun said on the postgame radio. 'Players are going to have those type of games.”

Northern Iowa had a stretch of 10:56 in the second half where it didn't make a field goal. It was snapped with 3:37 to play by a Matt Bohannon 3-pointer to make it 68-55.

'We fought and we battled in this one,” Washpun said. 'We've just got to find a way to make a few more plays.”

Washpun finished with 23 points and six assists. Paul Jesperson had 15 points and Matt Bohannon 13 points.

The Panther bench came up with just four points, seven rebounds and zero assists in 30 minutes. 'Like I've talked about, we are exploring every angle,” Jacobson said.

UNI is back on the road Wednesday at Bradley (3-18, 1-7).

'We know how good we can be, how good we can play,” Washpun said. 'We need to break through our slump here and carry on through to February.”