Hlas: Suddenly, stunningly, it's a Panther Nation

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. - Oklahoma froze over Saturday morning with sleet and snow. Kansas froze over Saturday night, thanks to the icy glare of America's newest basketball darling.

Northern Iowa isn't just on the tip of the tongues of basketball fans across the United States and Planet Earth. It's in their whole mouths.

Who are these guys? They're the Northern Iowa Panthers, a 30-win team that's headed to St. Louis this week to try to inflict its will on some other college superpower, be it Michigan State or Maryland.

The cuteness won't have been worn off to the nation. But just try telling the top-ranked, bottomed-out Kansas Jayhawks that UNI is a boutique team, a quirky little directional school that can't measure up against the biggest of the big boys.

CBS abbreviated Northern Iowa to NO IOWA in its score boxes of its other NCAA telecasts. Oh, CBS, you couldn't have been more wrong. It's Yes, Northern Iowa!

The score was UNI 69, Kansas 67. The Jayhawks led once, 2-0. Then the purple gang went to work, just as it had done 29 other times this season. And the team that prevailed wasn't the one with probably five future NBA players in its starting lineup.

See, these Panthers knew something the rest of America didn't. They knew they were good. Not just grind-it-out good against the Missouri Valley Conference, but basketball-good against Kansas and UNLV before it.

Adam Koch is good. His freshman brother, Jake Koch, is good. Jordan Eglseder, Kwadzo Ahelegbe, Johnny Moran, Ali Farokhmanesh - they're good. The bench, developed so brilliantly by Coach Ben Jacobson throughout the season, is good.

The Panthers didn't go to the NCAAs to win one game, make a heartwarming memory and leave the rest of the tourney for traditional powers.

Being a double-digit underdog, Adam Koch said, “was definitely not the way we looked at it. We feel we're a good team that can play with anybody.”

That wasn't cockiness. Cocky is the last thing you can call the feet-on-the-ground Koch. That was heartfelt belief.

This wasn't the remotest thing to a fluke in the Ford Center. UNI led for the last 39 minutes. This was a game-long, focused, smart, rock-chalk tough, and even flashy - yes, flashy - performance.

The Panthers controlled the flow most the game save for a wicked minute-long stretch late in the contest. Before that, every time Kansas got on a bit of a run, a UNI player swiped the momentum right back.

When Kansas shifted into defensive super-turbo in the final 1:07 to cut a 63-56 deficit to 63-62, UNI didn't flinch.

The moment of moments in a game packed with them was supplied yet again by Farokhmanesh, one of the brightest stars of this tournament.

The Panthers successfully broke the wicked full-court pressure and had a numbers advantage. Farokhmanesh stood with the ball, 40 seconds on the game clock, and more than 30 seconds or so on the shot clock. He hesitated for a moment as he thought about shooting the open shot instead of milking the clock.

Then he gave it a little more consideration. He was still open. So he shot.

“I thought I might as well,” Farokhmanesh said.

“If you know Ali,” Moran said, “you knew the shot was going up.”

Three points. The shortest Panther was the assassin, just like against UNLV.

The game was far from over with that shot, but the Jayhawks and the 15,587 fans in the arena knew what had just happened. The Oklahoma earth had just opened, and the nation's No. 1 team had been swallowed.

Farokhmanesh made two free throws with 4.8 seconds left for the comfort margin. His 3-point game-winner against UNLV came with 4.9 seconds to go. What will he do for an encore in St. Louis?

What will Ahelegbe, the fourth-year junior point guard do, too? His assignment Saturday was to match games with Sherron Collins, the Kansas senior who is everybody's All-America.

Ahelegbe went at Collins and his teammates all game as if they were Illinois State or Indiana State or Missouri State or Wichita State. He was 1 of 11 from the field, and yet he won the personal battle with 4-of-15 Collins. Ahelegbe had two turnovers, Collins five. UNI had nine turnovers, Kansas 15.

Those are UNI numbers. This was a UNI game.

The first half was when this game was won. Kansas scored 17 seconds into the game, then the Panthers immediately asserted themselves. They put themselves in a position to have America simultaneously smiling and shaking its head at halftime by scrapping.

Even the millions of people who had Kansas going all the way in their brackets had to admire how whenever there was a loose ball, the Panthers inevitably seemed to grab it. Whenever a Jayhawk had the ball in an unsafe place, UNI poked it away.

What helped as much as anything was the unwillingness of UNI's substitutes to back down. Freshman Marc Sonnen knifed for a basket. Freshman Jake Koch made foul shots. Lucas O'Rear, six inches shorter than All-America Aldrich, didn't give an inch in fighting for rebounds.

O'Rear had the audacity to tap in his own missed shot for the final points of the half. Then, in a play that typified the half, Collins was tied up for a jump ball with 3.4 seconds remaining, costing the Jayhawks the ball under the alternate possession.

But that was just half of the Panthers' story. They came back after intermission and played the same way.

“I think we just trust our system,” Farokhmanesh said. “That's 30 wins now, so it's been working for the most part.”

If playing your way into college basketball lore is your definition of “working for the most part,” then Farokhmanesh was definitely right.