The UNI basketball team will play three games at the Paradise Jam tournament in the Virgin Islands. The Panthers sit at 1-2 on the season after a loss at George Mason last weekend.
Coach Ben Jacobson admits that the Panthers have made too many mistakes in their first three games of the season, but says he’s encouraged because most of the mistakes have easy fixes. He says they were close to winning in both of their loses, but aren’t playing they way they need to be.
Jacobson says that while he can’t pinpoint some of the mistakes to one or two aspects of the game, he is confident they can all be overcome with better effort. “The mistakes have to do with our positioning, and in some cases making a second effort, making a great effort, maybe in rebounding, maybe in something else,” Jacobson says.
While some of the Panthers are trying to adjust to new roles this year, Jacobson says that the majority of the mistakes cannot be chalked up to a lack of experience. He says they’ve been practicing some of these things long enough and they need to do a better job of those things. The Panthers open the Paradise Jam Friday afternoon with a match-up against Loyala Marymount of the West Coast Conference.
Jacobson says the Lions are a team defined by balance through their first four games. Should UNI defeat Loyola, they would advance to meet the winner of the Maryland-Marist contest. With a loss, the Panthers will face the loser of that game.
By Jesse Gavin, KCNZ, Cedar Falls