UNI hoops secures home-and-home with Xavier

CEDAR FALLS — As last year's college basketball season moved toward its close, Northern Iowa men's basketball coach Ben Jacobson was asked about his team's tough non-conference schedule, and how it might've affected his Panthers.

At the time, he said the way it was set up and how many tough games they had right in a row was probably not a road he'd want to go down again.

On Thursday, he laughed when The Gazette asked him if he'd changed his mind. Both Northern Iowa and Xavier University announced a home-and-home series that will start at Xavier on Nov. 26 and return to McLeod Center on Dec. 22, 2017.

'That's a fair question,' Jacobson said through a laugh. 'It seems like we get into it and I have thoughts about that, about, 'Man, is this the right thing to do with our guys and our basketball team?' when you've got the list of teams we had last year and what we'll have this year. When we're not in the middle of it and we get into the spring and summer and we're putting together the non-conference schedule, it's what we talk about with our players all the time. We (realize we) want to play the best teams we can play.'

That much is abundantly clear.

With the addition of the Musketeers to the schedule, the Panthers now have games at Xavier, at North Carolina and in Des Moines against Iowa. The Musketeers and Tar Heels are expected to be at least ranked in the preseason top 10, if not the top five in the country. Additionally, UNI plays in the Puerto Rico Tip-Off, which includes Arizona State, Clemson, Davidson, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tulane and Xavier, so there's more than a small chance the Panthers play at least one other power-5 conference school.

Xavier represents a team, under Coach Chris Mack, that has been to three Sweet Sixteens in the last seven years, and missed the NCAA Tournament just once in that span. The Musketeers are coming off a second-place finish in the Big East and second-round exit in the NCAA Tournament as a No. 2 seed.

Oh, and they just got back Trevon Bluiett, who withdrew from NBA Draft consideration.

'What Chris has done with that program and continues to do with that program, and a team they bring back from a year ago with the return of one of their best guys, who's withdrawn from the NBA Draft, obviously that solidifies them as a top five team in the country next year,' Jacobson said. 'To have a game at their place, have it be a home-and-home series, knowing that we have a road game at North Carolina, now we know we're going to have two road games against top-10 teams in the country.'

Jacobson said the deal came together out of both schools' desire to take advantage of the NCAA rule that allows teams in an exempt tournament with three games to play a fourth against another team in that tournament. Last year, UNI did that with its game at New Mexico, and when they went looking for another one this year, it worked out that Mack and Xavier were looking for the same thing.

As attractive as it was to Jacobson to get a top-flight team on the schedule, it was a bigger boon to get the home game attached as well.

Jacobson and his staff try to strike a balance of home, neutral and away in non-conference play. While sometimes it doesn't have the balance they want exactly, they don't worry too much about it as long as it means steps forward for the program.

'Sometimes we're heavier neutral and road with some of the better teams, but I understood that, our staff understands it; our players love it,' Jacobson said. 'Our guys want to play against the best, and this gives us another opportunity to do it. There's no question in our mind that we're going to take the home-and-home with Xavier, even though we've got North Carolina, we've got Iowa and the Puerto Rico tournament is terrific. It's what our guys want to do.'

Jacobson said there are still three games left for UNI to fill in the nine slots for non-conference games, and a few others already contracted will be released in the next week or two.

With the Xavier game on Nov. 26, UNI has three games officially scheduled, plus the Puerto Rico Tip-Off on Nov. 17, 18 and 20. UNI has games set on Dec. 3 at Wyoming and Dec. 17 against Iowa in the Big Four Classic. The date for the UNC game has yet to be announced.

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