Jacobson much happier with UNI effort against North Florida

CEDAR FALLS - Northern Iowa men's basketball coach Ben Jacobson didn't like how his team played against Morgan State. Though his team recovered from a sluggish start to win, he wanted and expected much more.

He and the Panthers got that on Saturday against North Florida, starting the game on an 18-0 run and closing out a 66-49 win to move to 4-0.

'This was our best defensive performance,” Jacobson said. 'Our guys were aggressive and really went after it.

'I didn't like our game Thursday night. I didn't think we had everything going in the right direction. We came out today, defended and rebounded really hard, and I liked that from our team.”

UNI was led by forward Seth Tuttle, who had 19 points on 7 of 7 shooting (4 of 4 free throws) and had five rebounds and two assists.

Tuttle agreed with his coach in that the team wanted to erase what happened Thursday. Despite a lull in the second half in which the Ospreys came within seven at 40-33, he said the team had a completely different demeanor on Saturday.

The difference was even in that stretch, it was simply not hitting shots instead of a lack of focus or intensity.

'We were flat on Thursday,” Tuttle said. 'On Thursday we didn't have any effort, we weren't doing anything. We weren't attacking, we weren't playing any defense, we weren't rebounding. Today we were doing all those things, just for a stretch there we were missing shots.

'I would say the effort we had today wasn't even close to what we had that first half on Thursday.”

Not only did UNI get the effort it wanted overall, but it got an in-game test by way of two different zone defenses from North Florida. The Ospreys ran a 2-3 zone and 1-3-1 zone, the latter of which they stuck with for much of the second half.

It forced Jacobson to go with both Deon Mitchell and Wes Washpun on the floor for long stretches in order to combat the size and speed from the North Florida defenders. Washpun finished with 10 points on 3 of 4 shooting - and broke a string of 81:45 of game time without missing a field goal, stretching from 12:30 left in the game against Stephen F. Austin to 15:44 left on Saturday - and said he felt like they handled the zone well in terms of finding open shots.

Having focused so much on defense and rebounding in practice, there have been things the Panthers just haven't been able to work on offensively with the string of games every other day, and that was one of them.

UNI shot 11 of 25 as a team from 3-point range - almost exclusively against the zone - and eventually were able to break the triple team at the elbow against the 1-3-1 to find their big men under the basket for some easy scores.

This early in the season, the coaches and players are still learning exactly what they've got. Combined with the effort, Jacobson and Co. left happy on a number of levels, including how they responded to a different opposing defense.

'I'm glad we got through the zone today, so now we've seen it in game action. It's one thing to practice that, but now we've seen zone for an extended time in a game,” Jacobson said. 'It had us on our heels a little bit.

'Once we settled in, maybe the 10-minute, 12-minute mark of the second half, once we got a little bit better rhythm to it we settled in and got the basketball into the gap at the top of the floor and got it into Seth (Tuttle) a couple times, then we were fine.”

UNI next heads to Cancun, Mexico for the rest of the Cancun Challenge. The Panthers will play Virginia Tech on Tuesday at 6 p.m., then either Northwestern or Miami on Wednesday - both games on CBS Sports Network.

l Comments: (319) 368-8884; jeremiah.davis@thegazette.com