UNI basketball coach Ben Jacobson says just a handful of plays have kept his team from challenging for the top of the standings in the Missouri Valley Conference, and he’s hoping the Panthers start making more of those plays as they open their second round through the league.
Jacobson says he’s been emphasizing the importance of making what he calls “the hard plays.” He says you have to execute perfectly when you need one possession and get a rebound when one is really needed. “We’ve done it in some games, in our last three road games we have not. If we had, we’d be 7-1,” Jacobson says.
Jacobson says that there hasn’t been just one thing to pinpoint in the late game situations where the Panthers have come up short as he says the situations have been different. He says he’s talked to the team about being able to make the hard play not matter what area of the game it is in.
The Panthers host Evansville tonight. UNI got its only road win of the season when the Panthers beat the Purple Aces 80-53 three weeks ago.
Jacobson says Evansville will be doing many of the same things tonight that they did in that game.
The Panthers and the Purple Aces will tip off at 7:00 tonight in the McLeod Center.
(Reporting by Jesse Gavin, KCNZ Cedar Falls)