But he won’t have to.
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Northern Iowa won the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament.
Northern Iowa (23-12) spread the floor against Texas forcing the Longhorns to work on defense. Different guys have stepped up when they needed to and have always been willing to take big shots.
“(Jacobson) said, ‘You guys can enjoy it for 10 minutes, you can enjoy it tomorrow morning, however you want to handle it, handle it, ‘” Jesperson said.
Just seconds after the game ended, St. Joe’s beat Cincinnati when a last-second shot was ruled no good. Northern Iowa players swarmed him and celebrated with the traveling fans.
Northern Iowa beat UNLV and Kansas in the 2010 tournament in Oklahoma City for its only trip to the Sweet 16.
“We were really fortunate and blessed to win”, Kennedy said. “It kind of felt like the exact same”.
The program isn’t unfamiliar with upsets, either. Defensively, Northern Iowa yields 62.9 points against the opposing teams.
Twelve points. Forty-four seconds. The Panthers were the sixth double-digit seed to win on Friday.
Afterward, someone asked Jesperson: Who’s the most famous person in your family?
So he pulled up an angle and shot right in front of where I was sitting.
“It’s a great moment for all of us”, Jesperson said. Northern Iowa settled down and countered with a significant run of its own to build a 16-point lead (33-17) with 6:41 left following a Washpun layup. One of those came inside the final five seconds.
Northern Iowa passed the ball in under its basket after Isaiah Taylor tied the score on a layup with 2.7 seconds to play. There wasn’t a play drawn up for the final sequence.
Before fouling out in the first overtime, Washpun did a little of everything for the Panthers.
But Texas knew that, too. The Panthers’ collapsed happened when Matt Bohannon, who mainly inbounds the ball, was on the bench with a left knee injury. “Hopefully we’re going to see Shaka representing not only Texas, but California these next couple weeks”.
“I was behind him and just wanted to go and find him and tackle him to be honest”, Washpun said.
“The whole arena went silent”, he said.
March 14, 1981 was the day she walked into my life, or rather I walked into hers, sitting at a press table in the University of Texas’ Frank Erwin Center. I thought it had a chance when it left my hands.
“I think that people realize we’re the real deal”, said Lumberjacks star Thomas Walkup, who could just as easily be speaking for underappreciated teams everywhere. “Then you immediately start thinking about all the work you put in, all the time you put in the gym, the countless hours, all the time you spend you spend with your teammates, the game you play, everything”. Xavier, Maryland, Villanova and Texas A&M should be anxious about an upset, just like Notre Dame.
By mid-Saturday afternoon, times had begun to change for UNI. The Panthers beat Wyoming in last year’s tournament.
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That’s when things got extra insane. The 6-5 freshman looks like a world-beater in some games then completely disappears for a few games.
