Seth Tuttle talks about the loss to Louisville.
UNI basketball coach Ben Jacobson says the bar has been raised, again. The Panthers finished a record breaking season with a 31-4 record after a 66-53 loss to Louisville in the NCAA Tournament in Seattle.
Nate Buss is one of five Panther seniors who closed out their career and says he hopes the seniors set a standard when it comes to work ethic.
“For the years to come, every time you walk into the gym in Cedar Falls at Northern Iowa, you are going to see guys working. Whether it’s a redshirt or a senior, they are going to be getting their shots up, and I think that’s the standard that’s going to be continued for years to come,” according to Buss.
Jacobson says he is proud of his team which achieved the program’s first top ten ranking and won the Missouri Valley post season tournament. “With all of the success we’ve had this year, they haven’t changed at all in terms of who they are and what they stand for and how they represent their families and our program and our school. That’s what I am most proud of,” Jacobson says.
Ben Jacobson
Jacobson says the senior class deserves much of the credit. “From a basketball standpoint within our program — they raised the bar again. And I love them for that,” Jacobson says. “We’ve had a lot of good things happen at Northern Iowa in our men’s basketball program, these guys raised the bar one more time. And that’s hard to do with some of the things we did, but they did it.”
Jacobson called it the best season in program history. “We didn’t get to the Sweet 16, so that’s the only thing we didn’t match. But they just saw the best four months of basketball our program’s ever had — and that’s saying a lot,” according to Jacobson. “So these guys, I love them, absolutely love them.”