Panthers help inflict drought of epic proportions on Drake

ST. LOUIS - It was a half-hour into its game against Drake Friday afternoon, and you could imagine the harsh remarks being said about the Northern Iowa men's basketball team from now through Selection Sunday.

Unkind things like UNI doesn't deserve to be in the NCAA tournament no matter its 25-5 record and Missouri Valley Conference regular-season title. You lose to 10th-place Evansville and 8th-place Drake in two of your last three games, take a hike. And so forth.

That was when Drake led the Panthers 24-13 midway through the first-half of their MVC quarterfinal in the Scottstrade Center Friday. Arch Madness, indeed.

Then the Panthers scored 33 of the game's next 36 points. Drake went an almost-inconceivable 20 minutes and 59 seconds without a basket. And UNI won comfortably, 55-40, to improve to 26-4 and advance to Saturday's semis.

“I thought we guarded pretty well the last 30 minutes of the basketball game,” UNI Coach Ben Jacobson said in what should stand as the understatement of the tournament.

Twenty-one minutes without allowing a basket? Elementary school B-team games don't have scoring droughts that long. Soccer games don't have scoring droughts that long. The Mojave Desert doesn't have droughts that long.

This was the final coating of sealant for the Panthers' NCAA invitation. There will be no bubble to wobble on for the next week. Now it's a matter of how much more business UNI can take care of here to elevate its seeding in the big tourney.

“They didn't have to make a statement today,” said Drake Coach Mark Phelps, wishing the Panthers hadn't. “Their body of work clearly puts them as one of the best teams in the country and clearly one of the 65 teams that will get invited to the tournament. They didn't have to win today in my opinion.”

Yeah, they did. You don't want to give the NCAA committee any ammunition to kick you down and maybe out of its bracket.

But there it was, a 14-18 Drake team leading UNI by 11 points. The Bulldogs looked awfully frisky for a team that had earned its MVC first-round win over Southern Illinois just 16 hours earlier. Then the Panthers locked in the defense that ranks second in the nation in scoring defense (54.8 points per game).

“They came out, they were hitting every shot,” said UNI guard Johnny Moran, one of his team's foremost defenders. “We slowed down and gathered ourselves, and defensively we just stepped it up. We knew that was going to win us the game. The defense always does.”

Northern Iowa isn't Showtime. It's Cedar Valley meat and potatoes. It's calm, it's confident, it's constant effort and focus. It's point guard Kwadzo Ahelegbe taking a charge and a spill he couldn't have been blamed for avoiding when his team was ahead by 19 points.

“We're not a team you can watch for ten minutes and say OK, that's one of the top 25 teams in the country,” Jacobson said. “It takes longer than that with our basketball team.

“When you watch us long enough, I think you see a very efficient team at both ends of the floor. And because of that, up five, down five, it really, to these guys, doesn't make that much difference. We can play different styles and different circumstances because we have the experience and depth to do it.”

Here's what else UNI can do: It can score six points on one extended possession.

Up 28-26 early in the second half, Ali Farokhmanesh sank a 3-pointer after missing all four of his tries from that distance in the first half. Drake's Bill Eaddy committed a foul after the shot, so UNI retained possession.

And Farokhmanesh ... missed a 3-pointer.

But the Panthers retained possession, UNI muscle man Lucas O'Rear directed the ball back out to Farokhmanesh, and the senior swished another long ball.

“My teammates told me to keep shooting, my coaches told me to keep shooting,” Farokhmanesh said.

“If you're worrying about the last three shots, you're never going to make the next one.”

Winners don't waste energy worrying.

“There are probably people in the crowd freaking out that we're down 11 and not shooting the ball well,” said Farokhmanesh. “But if you look at each other, we're just calm-faced. We're not worried. We know we're going to make a run.

“The big thing is our defense is going to be there no matter what. It's just a matter of time before our offense catches up to our defense.”

Whether someone else's offense in this league will catch up to the Panthers' defense is the question still to be answered here.