UNI defense overshadowing growing success of offense

CEDAR FALLS - Throughout this season, the Northern Iowa defense has - justifiably - gotten all the attention. And why not, with the sixth best scoring defense in the country as of Saturday, and the 18th best adjusted defensive efficiency in the country, according to KenPom?

But as good as that defense has been - and will need to continue to be with so much of the Missouri Valley Conference schedule to go - the offense has made steady improvements throughout the season from where it started on Nov. 15 against North Dakota. Defense can create offense sometimes, but at some point the unit has to hold itself up.

That's starting to show up for the Panthers (15-2, 4-1 MVC).

'Over the course of the last two or three weeks, I think the guys have done a much better job of screening; we've added some things to our offense over the course of the last month and now having enough practices and games to get comfortable with it has helped,” said Coach Ben Jacobson. 'The other part is that when we started the year and played seven games in the first 16 days, there was some travel involved - going to Cancun, at Stephen F. (Austin) - we were just playing games and getting ready for games with not much time to build the offense.

'The schedule slowed down after that to where we could start to build some of the offense, and I think we're starting to see some of the benefits from that.”

Jacobson was vocal at the start of the year that he and his staff had put nearly 100 percent of their focus in preseason workouts and practices into shoring up the defensive end after a forgettable year in that area last season.

He said at media day and after the first few games it would be a work in progress, and what followers of UNI saw was exactly that.

And though they don't run and gun like one of their fellow in-state teams does, the Panthers are growing in efficiency. They're the 346th-ranked team in Adjusted Tempo at 59.2 possessions per 40 minutes, but are 41st in Adjusted Offensive Efficiency with 1.089 points per possession according to KenPom.

While Jacobson doesn't pay close - or really any, he said - attention to those rankings, he understands how things have worked out that way. He credited that to his players being much more comfortable in their offensive sets, as well as the aforementioned defense creating offense and it affecting the game overall with its success.

'Two things I would say (about efficiency). One, when we rebound the basketball; any time we're able to get a missed shot and get out into transition, we're going to do everything we can do take advantage of it,” Jacobson said. 'If we don't score in transition, over the course of the last month here, I think our team has really grown in terms of understanding what we're looking for and being able to get some movement and then get into an action.

'Second, our defense is much different and much better than what it was a year ago, and because of that the other team is taking longer to get shots. So that aspect is different from a year ago, and that lends itself to lower possession games. If our defense is playing at a high level, there's going to be fewer possessions in the game because it means we were able to get back in transition defense, set our defense and hopefully force the opponent to have to go past their first option, go past their second option and maybe get into a late shot clock situation.”

As the Panthers get into the meat of the MVC schedule, Jacobson said his team will continue to perfect what they've implemented so far on the offensive end, while potentially adding some other things as they go along.

And, as has been the case all season, when not being led in transition by either Deion Mitchell or Wes Washpun, the ball will continue to go through senior forward Seth Tuttle. Whether its Sunday at home against Missouri State or any of the remaining 13 games before the MVC Tournament, the ball will touch Tuttle's hands every possession he's on the floor.

'For us, Seth catches it everywhere on the floor. He catches it on the block, he catches it in the high post, he catches it out on the 3-point line. We use him as a ball screen. Any way we can involve him,” Jacobson said. 'And kind of the last part of it has been the addition of some actions, some screen the screener-type actions that involves everybody. That's an important part of it so that the rest of our guys have got some things they're more involved with.

'We'll continue to add some things as we go. I like where we're at today much better than where we were three weeks ago. We've been able to get some things in that have really helped our team offensively, and guys have really grabbed onto them.”

l Comments: (319) 368-8884; jeremiah.davis@thegazette.com