OKLAHOMA CITY — In March Madness, it’s not cool to point out March Sadness. In other words, don’t talk about college basketball in the state of Iowa.
The Iowa Hawkeyes have hit rock bottom. Iowa State can’t get off the mat. Drake is rebuilding. The one guiding light in one of the worst college basketball states east of the Colorado state line is a school that, on paper, has no right to hold more than a flickering flame.
But here’s little Northern Iowa, answering questions Friday about playing top-ranked Kansas today in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. The Panthers’ 6,500-seat McLeod Center is the smallest Division I gym in the state. They won their first NCAA Tournament game in 20 years Thursday and recruit players who eat McDonald’s but don’t make its All-American team.
How’d they do it? How did a midmajor directional school from quaint Cedar Falls, Iowa, go 29-4, win consecutive Missouri Valley titles and become the scourge of what historically has been a very good college basketball state?
“We do things the right way,” said Kerwin Dunham, a junior guard from Bondurant, Iowa.
The right way is Ben Jacobson’s way. The fourth-year coach from Mayville, N.D., has built a program based on hard-working Midwest values: defense, equal distribution of playing time and a bond that views player departure like family deaths.
It’s not based on five-star recruits. Not a single All-American dots the UNI roster. But the Panthers have six first-team all-state Iowa picks as well as first-team all-staters from Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Iowa and Iowa State likely didn’t touch them. They weren’t game-changers. To Jacobson’s way, however, they changed his program.
“We’ve got a plan as to how we’re going to play offensively and defensively, and they have to fit that,” Jacobson said. “But more important, we get guys that are unselfish and guys that really care about winning. And that extends beyond the basketball floor, into the classroom and how they represent our university.”
Jacobson knows how to keep them happy. Ten players play at least 11 minutes with substitution resembling line changes in hockey. That’s one reason why he hasn’t had one significant defection.
He could have. He took the job in 2006 when Greg McDermott went 95 miles down the road to Iowa State. The first thing Jacobson did was sit down with signees Greg Egl- seder and Adam Koch. Eglseder, the biggest thing to a big name after earning first-time all-state honors a third time, nearly joined McDermott.
“Obviously, I thought about it,” Eglseder said. “But it wasn’t too long before I figured it out. Adam Koch called me and we decided to stay. Coach Jake sat down with my family and said there wouldn’t be any changes.”
Today Eglseder and Koch are the leading scorers and nucleus of the only nonconference team to win on a Big 12 court this past season. That was Dec. 2 at Iowa State, where McDermott will be atop the nation’s hot-seat list next season with a Big 12 record of 21-43.
Six players, including his starting backcourt of Will Blalock and Curtis Stinson, left McDermott’s program in his first six months. Star Wesley Johnson transferred to Syracuse two years ago, and second-team all-Big 12 forward Craig Brackins recently announced he’s going pro.
At Iowa, things are even worse. In three years under Todd Lickliter, the Hawkeyes went 15-39 in the Big Ten and 10-22 overall this season, a school record for losses. Nine scholarship players have transferred, and in five years basketball revenue has dropped nearly $1 million. Lickliter was fired Monday.
Drake, under ex-Arizona State assistant Mark Phelps, has gone 14-22 in the Missouri Valley since Keno Davis bolted for Providence three years ago.
Holding the tattered state flag is Northern Iowa, bravely carrying it into the Ford Center today to play the top-ranked team in the land. Is that madness or what?
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
