Surging Drake up next for struggling UNI men’s basketball team

CEDAR FALLS — Five-game losing streaks are never timely, but Northern Iowa’s recent run of poor play elicited the word “weird” from men’s basketball coach Ben Jacobson.

While the first three losses were each close, competitive games, UNI’s most-recent two were listless performances. Last-place Evansville got its first Missouri Valley Conference win and Indiana State largely cruised to an 18-point victory at McLeod Center last Saturday.

“To go the whole season and have our two games where we don’t play very (well) happen this late in the year, it’s just a little bit weird,” Jacobson said. “In saying that, we played so (well) up until the last two (games). That was just three games ago. Now, it feels like a hundred years ago when you play like you did at Evansville and you play like you did against Indiana State. I don’t think it’s going to take much, so it’s my job as our head coach to just change the angle a touch.”

Jacobson said after the Indiana State game that it’s time for him and his staff to be great and “find something,” if there’s anything to be found, that can help his struggling team.

Throughout his 17-year tenure as UNI’s coach, Jacobson has grown a reputation for routinely having his teams playing their best basketball when the MVC tournament arrives. So when it comes to getting his team out of the rut it finds itself in, looking back is as much a part of finding success as looking forward is.

“We’ll find it. We got a lot of good basketball in us still,” Jacobson said. “I’ve got a ton of confidence that we’re going to play good basketball.”

With only four regular-season games left the Panthers’ (12-14, 8-8) schedule does them no favors. All of their remaining opponents are among the conference’s top six teams that are within two games of each other.

Preseason favorite Drake — which UNI fell short to, 88-81, in double-overtime two weeks ago — comes to Cedar Falls at 8 p.m. Wednesday (TV: Bally Sports Midwest/Kansas City/Indiana Extra, NBC Sports Chicago Plus) at the other end of the spectrum, having won seven straight games.

Given the quick turnaround of this rivalry, Jacobson said the dynamics are typically a little different than playing a conference opponent with three or more weeks of separation between games. UNI’s recent poor play transcends the idea of one-off, single-game adjustments.

“Because we didn’t play great basketball in our last two games — when you’re talking about is there something that we gotta do or can we do a lot different specific to Drake — offensively we gotta find something, whether it’s doing the things we’re doing a little bit better, or, throwing something new in there more so that we can play better. Whether it’s Drake or somebody else.”

As great as MVC player of the year candidate Tucker DeVries has been for Drake (21-6, 12-4) this season, improved play over recent weeks from veteran point guard Roman Penn has made the Bulldogs much more formidable.

Penn scored a team-high 28 points in the Bulldogs’ win over the Panthers at Knapp Center, and has averaged 19.2 points in his previous six games.

“Penn had a terrific game,” Jacobson said. “We were challenged by the high ball screen actions. Whether they set them, they slipped through them, they added a little wrinkle to them — down the stretch he really controlled the game. We’re going to have to handle that better.”