UNI men’s basketball tries to move on after loss to last-place Evansville

CEDAR FALLS — Short of spectacular seasons for the record books, most include stretches that test a team’s mettle.

Northern Iowa men’s basketball currently finds itself in one of those stretches.

A loss to last-place Evansville Wednesday night was the Panthers’ fourth straight, and Coach Ben Jacobson said it’s one of those games you better move on from.

“Boy, we didn’t do much right,” Jacobson said. “One, we haven’t played like that really all year. The second thing that I kept thinking about was the way it was going. It was one of those where you almost got to just leave it behind you in Evansville and move on to the next.

“I don’t know if there’s a lot from that one that’s going to help us going forward just because we were so out of sorts.”

A considerable part of UNI’s struggles against the Purple Aces was their blitzing double teams on all of the Panthers’ high ball screens for Bowen Born.

Born finished the game tying his season-high with six turnovers, and finished 2-of-11 from the field with only nine points.

Jacobson acknowledged he didn’t do enough to help Born navigate Evansville’s double teams, and also pointed out there are adjustments they’ll be making.

“I didn’t have the guys in the right spots to make it easier for Bowen,” Jacobson said. “We have to do everything we can to make it as easy as possible for Bowen to get it out (of the double team), because he’ll get it out. That’s on me. We should’ve picked that apart.”

When it comes to moving forward, Jacobson is confident his team can quickly snap back into form.

“There’s a stretch every year of kind of two, three games, kind of 10 days, where you just got to find a way to battle what we’re talking about where you’ve got that edge and you’re able to dictate the action,” Jacobson said. “We didn’t have that at a high enough level against Bradley and we certainly didn’t have it at a high enough level against Evansville. Hopefully ours this year is a two-game stretch and we’re back to playing the way we’ve played a lot in the last six weeks.”

The five remaining regular-season MVC games offer the Panthers (12-13, 8-7) no relief as each opponent currently sits ahead of them in the league standings. First up is a rematch against Indiana State at McLeod Center at 1 p.m. Saturday (ESPN3). The Sycamores (17-9, 10-5) gave UNI its first loss in this four-game skid, 79-71, two weeks ago.

“They have multiple guys that handle the ball, multiple guys that make 3s,” Jacobson said. “The versatility of some guys upfront — their ball handling goes all the way through their power forward and their center — and that makes it challenging.”