Defense remains the issue for UNI men’s basketball entering MVC tournament

CEDAR FALLS — Northern Iowa enters the Missouri Valley Conference men’s basketball tournament Thursday with 70-to-1 odds of capturing the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

However, Panthers Coach Ben Jacobson likes his team’s chances, as long as it can clean up its defense.

“The most important thing with this team is we’ve got to defend better,” Jacobson said. “We’re still running into too many screens. Not guarding the ball quite (well) enough. Not walling up enough at the rim.

“Our activity level in the gaps — not enough. It’s enough (things) where with a practice (Tuesday) and more of a walk-through on Wednesday, we’re not going to (fix) a lot of that now.”

UNI’s defensive shortcomings are largely to blame for losing eight of its last nine regular-season MVC games. After allowing 64.6 points per game during a stretch that included seven wins over an eight-game span in January, the Panthers’ February skid can be pinned down to allowing 80.75 points per game in those eight losses.

“What can change is — maybe not change, maybe just be a little bit better — our mentality,” Jacobson said. “Just having more of an edge to us defensively when that ball goes up on Thursday. We’ve got to do a great job of getting our guys ready from a scouting standpoint for Thursday's game (and) keeping it as simple as we can so it leaves a lot of room to play as hard as we can defensively. That’s going to be the key for us to stay (in St. Louis) the longest.”

While the focus is on its defense, UNI’s offense has continued to prove itself as above average in the MVC.

In last Sunday’s regular-season finale against Belmont, the Panthers (13-17, 9-11) erased a 17-point second half deficit and tied the game at 65 with just over six minutes remaining. Most interesting about the game-tying run was a perimeter shooting lineup from Jacobson that spread out the Bruins — featuring Bowen Born, Trey Campbell, Landon Wolf, Drew Daniel and James Betz.

The combination has little playing time together this season, but Jacobson acknowledged this week that after Sunday’s results it’s become a group to regularly consider.

“The defense has to guard more of the floor when James is in opposed to Cole (Henry) and when Drew is in as opposed to Tytan (Anderson). Then, that guard combination when you’ve got Landon in there with Trey and Bowen,” Jacobson said. “It was really good (Sunday). It’s been good at some other times as well. We’ll see where that takes us for Thursday.”

Working in UNI’s favor at “Arch Madness” is a familiar first-round opponent on Thursday in Illinois State (noon Thursday). The Panthers swept the Redbirds (11-20, 6-14) in the regular season and have lost in the first round of the conference tournament to UNI each of the past two seasons.

However, despite all that familiarity, Jacobson pointed out how Illinois State first-year coach Ryan Pedon has continued to make adjustments and develop his team, therefore making this scout much different from the last back in mid-January.

“They are doing some things different here in their last couple (games),” Jacobson said. “Because we haven’t played them since early to mid-January, it was going to be kind of a new (scout) even if they were running a lot of the same stuff. It’s much more about what they’ve done in the last four, five ballgames.”