Nate Heise’s career-high powers UNI men to lopsided win

CEDAR FALLS — Northern Iowa’s men’s basketball team steadily worked its way past Prairie View A&M Tuesday night at McLeod Center, 74-55.

A career-high 25 points from Nate Heise, 19 of them in the first half, helped give UNI (4-7, 0-2) a 15-point lead at halftime.

“It feels pretty good, but it just feels better to get a win,” Heise said. “That Toledo (loss Saturday) it felt like we were on a good stretch. We played good against Richmond, we played good for the most part against Toledo and should’ve closed it out but we didn’t, so it was good to come back home and get a win.”

Heise’s dominant first half took off in earnest with 7:18 remaining when he slammed home a two-handed dunk off an in-bounds play and followed it up with a 3-pointer and another dunk off a Drew Daniel assist on the following two possessions.

Before his impressive trio of consecutive buckets, Heise began by providing the Panthers a third of their points during an early 12-0 run that gave them their first double-digit lead — hitting a left-wing 3 and converting a four-point play after a foul was called.

“That first 20 minutes for (Nate) were terrific,” UNI Coach Ben Jacobson said. “His versatility is so good. He’s very unselfish offensively. He lets the game come to him a little bit. He’s also finding out what he’s capable of and that to us is really, really exciting.

“He can get a lot done offensively for us.”

Just over 10 minutes into the second half Prairie View A&M (4-5) put together a comeback attempt with an 11-2 run to get within its halftime deficit at 52-40.

A pair of Bowen Born free throws and a 3 from the junior on the following possessions extended UNI’s lead back to 17. Prairie View A&M got no closer than 16 over the final 8:25 as UNI outscored the Panthers, 17-15.

“A game like tonight is tricky, because their lineup is very small and defensively very active,” Jacobson said. “... It’s just a very different game and it’s not one where if you’re not really in for long enough to get in the flow and the rhythm of things, weird possessions can happen.”

Tytan Anderson and Born joined Heise — who finished with 10 rebounds for his second career double-double — in double figures with 17 and 13 points, respectively.

Prairie View A&M was led by 13 points from Javontae Hopkins, who was joined in double figures by Kevin McGaskey with 11.

The Panthers return to action Sunday at 1 p.m. at McLeod Center against Alcorn State (1-8) and Jacobson said his team will be better for having had to figure out Tuesday night’s unique matchup.

“(We) had to do some different things offensively,” Jacobson said. “What (this game) does is gives us an opportunity to have to figure some things out. There’s some really valuable things that come out of playing a team that plays that hard and plays that well defensively and just gives you a different look.”