UNI and Loyola-Chicago meet with MVC men’s basketball championship on the line

CEDAR FALLS — It all comes down to Saturday night.

With three straight wins after being blown out, 85-58, at Gentile Arena on Feb. 13, Northern Iowa (17-10, 13-4) hosts the rematch with Loyola-Chicago (22-6, 13-4) for a de facto Missouri Valley Conference men’s basketball regular-season championship game at a sold-out McLeod Center on Saturday at 5 p.m. (ESPNU).

Technically, not quite everything is riding on the regular-season finale, but an MVC regular-season championship and NIT automatic bid are both for the taking.

The Panthers, who haven’t reached postseason play since a 2016 NCAA Tournament appearance, host the Ramblers for their highest-stakes game since losing to Drake in the 2020 MVC Tournament quarterfinals.

Despite all the pomp and circumstance on tap Saturday, UNI head coach Ben Jacobson told The Gazette he hasn’t thought much about the unique nature of the next game.

“It’s kind of, you know, maybe bounced in and out as opposed to maybe just sitting down thinking about, man, this is (big),” Jacobson said. “But, I certainly have thought about it a little bit. You put a lot of work in for a long time and one of the goals that our guys had when we started the year was to be regular-season champs. Man, I love it and I know our guys do, too.”

UNI enters its Loyola-Chicago rematch seemingly playing its best basketball of the season. In the last two games, the Panthers scored 95 and 88 points, marking just the second time in Jacobson’s 15-year tenure his team has scored 88 or more in back-to-back games (Division I opponents only).

“What we’re doing at that end of the floor — like, the confidence the guys are playing with, the amount of trust that’s taking place right now, again, I keep going back to it a lot — the passing, the cutting, the pace that we’re playing at is really good at that end,” Jacobson said.

A better performance on offense against the Ramblers this go-around will likely require more from Noah Carter. The sophomore forward scored only two points on 1-of-6 shooting in the Feb. 13 loss as he was challenged by Loyola-Chicago’s depth at center.

“It’s a lot to deal with, because each of those guys brings something different to the table,” Jacobson said. “Their defense changes when they change (at) that position. (Noah) got bumped off his spots at Loyola.

“Looking forward to seeing him do what he’s done for us a lot this year, and that’s get himself to where he needs to get to get fouled, get us some baskets, because he’s been terrific for us.”

While the Panther offense appears to be ready for the rematch, their defense — which Jacobson continues to critique despite steady improvement throughout the season — was overwhelmed in the series’ first game. Despite his emphasis to move past that ugly loss, the study of its film has been critical.

“There’s so many things in that first game that we need to do better,” Jacobson said. “Loyola did have one of those days offensively where they made a lot of 3s early in the game and that helped them get ahead 30 to 20, but even after that, they really dissected us.

“They got points at the rim, they got points in transition, they got points in the post, they got points on the skip-pass 3 — you name it. So there are a number of things we can learn from that film.”