UNI stunned in final minute against Texas A&M

OKLAHOMA CITY — In the final five games of the 2015-16 college basketball season, Northern Iowa played with fire. With less than a minute to go in each game, the Panthers were tied. In the first four, UNI found a way to win.

In the fifth, it found a way to lose. In the most gut-wrenching way possible.

Texas A&M went on a 14-2 run in the final 44 seconds to tie the game and send it to overtime, with UNI committing four turnovers in the process. Through two overtimes, the tension didn't break. But the surge was too much to overcome this time. The Aggies advanced to the Sweet 16 with a 92-88 double-overtime win.

It is the largest last-minute deficit overcome to win in college basketball history.

The heartbreak was etched in the faces of everyone in purple after the game. The thousand-yard stares in the locker room were enough to tell the whole story.

'I've been with these guys all year and they haven't panicked for two months, so I don't think they panicked,' said Coach Ben Jacobson. 'I suppose anyone who watched it is going to describe it as that. But I've been with these guys for two months, and all you have to do is look at the situations we've been in.

'We just had 30 seconds where everything went the wrong way. You give Texas A&M credit. It hurt that (Matt) Bohannon was not in the game. He's the guy who takes it out for us. That's a huge change. He knows which guy is going to be open. That falls on me for not having a second guy ready in that situation, to be able to understand and ready to do all that. There's a lot to it.'

This is how you erase a 12-point deficit in 35 seconds!Relive the Aggie Miracle...NCAA March Madness on Sunday, March 20, 2016

This is how you erase a 12-point deficit in 35 seconds!Relive the Aggie Miracle...

Posted by

The mistakes and errors weren't limited to one player. It was a cascade of Murphy's Law.

Wes Washpun had the final turnover in regulation. Klint Carlson opted for a dunk toward the end of regulation that gave the Aggies the ball back with plenty of time to tie it.

In overtime, Jeremy Morgan — who had been the star of the game for the Panthers — missed the front end of a 1-and-1 that could've put the Panthers up 3. Instead, A&M tied it, and sent it to a second overtime.

Both Washpun and Paul Jesperson fouled out in the extra frames, leaving Jacobson to play Robert Knar, who only saw action in spot duty at the end of long-decided games. Bohannon sat on the bench with an slight injury to his knee, not able to perform his usual aforementioned in-bound duties.

The fall didn't happen in one play or by one player, but it happened. And it's going to be hard for the whole team to live with.

'They just turned up the pressure a little bit, started denying the passing lanes. Credit to Texas A&M for turning up the pressure and making some plays when they had to,' Washpun said. 'I think they made a bunch of great individual plays. We turned the ball over and they capitalized on it. That's a credit to them.'

The first 39 minutes, 16 seconds were clinical for the Panthers. They seemed not to fear anything the Aggies threw their way. After leading by 10 at halftime, UNI weathered a pair of runs by A&M to get to 69-57 with 44 seconds to go in the first place.

Morgan had 36 points and 12 rebounds in an effort that otherwise would've gone in the pantheon of UNI sports history. Carlson had 17, including 10 in a row for the Panthers at one point.

So what happened? How could it have happened?

'Obviously there's things we wish we could take back, but they made the plays when they needed to make them,' Morgan said. 'I've never had something like this happen before, so I don't know (what to do). It's obviously going to be tough to live with.'

The whole basketball world had it marked in Sharpie.

Seemingly everyone online was celebrating a Panthers' trip to the Sweet 16 in that fateful final minute. Yes, even the players and coaches said they could taste it.

A loss like that happens once or twice in a generation, so yes, they afforded themselves the thought that it was going to happen. That makes everything that much worse.

'It felt like we were a minute away from dancing,' said Paul Jesperson. 'They made some great individual plays, and we weren't able to make a few we needed to make.'

Morgan felt it, too.

'Yeah, you know, it was right there. Just one play,' Morgan said. 'Just one. But you can't get them back now, you know?'

Working through devastation like this will not be easy, and it will not be quick, and no one in the Panthers' locker room argued otherwise.

How long the loss lingers is something Jacobson put on his shoulders in the wake of the second-round loss. He emphatically and categorically asserted his role in how that will happen going forward.

No frills, no long talks. Jacobson said he's going to go forward the only way he knows how, despite the tremendous pain of seeing three seniors he loves have to end their careers earlier than what they all thought they'd have to.

'My role is to lead. Plain and simple,' Jacobson said. 'I learned a lot from the three seniors about how to do that. I'm better at it now than when the season started. I, with the help of my staff and our administration, we will lead. Just like we're supposed to. And we will make sure our guys understand that things happen. We'll crank it and get ready and be ready to go as soon as we need to be come November. I don't know any other way.'

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