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CU faces a key road challenge against UNI
BY STEVEN PIVOVAR
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
Creighton gets a chance to gauge its midseason progress tonight against Northern Iowa.
The Bluejays make their final trip to the UNI-Dome in Cedar Falls, Iowa, for a 7:07 p.m. game against the 14-2 Panthers. Creighton is 9-4 but has lost the last four times it has played away from home.
"We're a team that's searching right now," Creighton coach Dana Altman said. "We're looking forward to the chance to play against a very good team and see where we're at right now."
Tonight's game is one that Missouri Valley Conference fans circled when the league's preseason poll was announced in December. Northern Iowa, with all five starters back from last season's NCAA tournament team, was tabbed the preseason favorite with Creighton holding down the No. 2 spot.
Also figuring to make this a marquee matchup was the meeting of two of the league's top players in Creighton's Nate Funk and Northern Iowa's Ben Jacobson. The two Sioux City natives finished 2-3 in voting for the Valley's player of the year award last season, with Jacobson edging Funk in the vote for the preseason player of the year.
Funk won't be in uniform tonight as he is out of the season after undergoing shoulder surgery last week. His absence doesn't diminish Northern Iowa coach Greg McDermott's respect for the Bluejays, who actually have a better record this season without Funk (6-1) than with him (3-3).
If Funk were healthy, he'd draw the assignment of guarding Jacobson, a 6-foot-3 senior who leads the Panthers with a 14.9 scoring average. That task now falls primarily to Nate Porter, the junior-college transfer who has shown steady improvement in the season's first 13 games, and Pierce Hibma, back after missing a month with a knee injury.
"Ben's a good offensive player, and he knows Greg's system," Altman said. "He's scored a lot of points in his career, and there's security there. With a guy like that, you know his shots are eventually going to go in.
"You don't stop a player like Ben, but we will try to slow him down a little."
If Creighton does, Northern Iowa has plenty of alternate sources of firepower. Sophomore center Eric Coleman is averaging 12.0 points, junior forward Grant Stout 11.6 and senior guard Erik Crawford 10.8. Point guard Brooks McKowen only scores four points per game, but he burned Creighton for 24 when the Bluejays visited the UNI-Dome two seasons ago.
Compounding Creighton's problems tonight is trying to figure out ways to score points against an improved Northern Iowa defense. The Panthers are allowing 59.6 points per game - an improvement of almost seven points per game froom last season - and have not allowed any team to score more than 70 points this season.
Half of the Panthers' 16 opponents have scored 60 points or fewer, with five failing to break 50.
"We felt that if were to compete for a championship, we needed to find ways other than just trying to score more points than our opponents," McDermott said. "Last year, we did not do that consistently enough. We knew defense was something we had to get better at. The players understood that, and they've worked hard to get better."
It's helped to have a veteran group to work with, McDermott said. Jacobson, Crawford and sixth man John Little are in their fourth seasons in the program, while Stout, McKowen and several key substitutes are three-season veterans.
"Our guys understand our system, and that makes it easy to make adjustments on the fly," McDermott said. "It's also helped that Ben Jacobson has made great strides defensively. We had to hide him the first couple of years."
Stout, who added about 20 pounds in the offseason, leads the Valley with 40 blocked shots while averaging a team-high 7.9 rebounds per game.
"Grant's added strength allows him to bang down low," McDermott said. "He's a guy that when we make a mistake, he has the ability to erase some of those mistakes."
BY STEVEN PIVOVAR
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
Creighton gets a chance to gauge its midseason progress tonight against Northern Iowa.
The Bluejays make their final trip to the UNI-Dome in Cedar Falls, Iowa, for a 7:07 p.m. game against the 14-2 Panthers. Creighton is 9-4 but has lost the last four times it has played away from home.
"We're a team that's searching right now," Creighton coach Dana Altman said. "We're looking forward to the chance to play against a very good team and see where we're at right now."
Tonight's game is one that Missouri Valley Conference fans circled when the league's preseason poll was announced in December. Northern Iowa, with all five starters back from last season's NCAA tournament team, was tabbed the preseason favorite with Creighton holding down the No. 2 spot.
Also figuring to make this a marquee matchup was the meeting of two of the league's top players in Creighton's Nate Funk and Northern Iowa's Ben Jacobson. The two Sioux City natives finished 2-3 in voting for the Valley's player of the year award last season, with Jacobson edging Funk in the vote for the preseason player of the year.
Funk won't be in uniform tonight as he is out of the season after undergoing shoulder surgery last week. His absence doesn't diminish Northern Iowa coach Greg McDermott's respect for the Bluejays, who actually have a better record this season without Funk (6-1) than with him (3-3).
If Funk were healthy, he'd draw the assignment of guarding Jacobson, a 6-foot-3 senior who leads the Panthers with a 14.9 scoring average. That task now falls primarily to Nate Porter, the junior-college transfer who has shown steady improvement in the season's first 13 games, and Pierce Hibma, back after missing a month with a knee injury.
"Ben's a good offensive player, and he knows Greg's system," Altman said. "He's scored a lot of points in his career, and there's security there. With a guy like that, you know his shots are eventually going to go in.
"You don't stop a player like Ben, but we will try to slow him down a little."
If Creighton does, Northern Iowa has plenty of alternate sources of firepower. Sophomore center Eric Coleman is averaging 12.0 points, junior forward Grant Stout 11.6 and senior guard Erik Crawford 10.8. Point guard Brooks McKowen only scores four points per game, but he burned Creighton for 24 when the Bluejays visited the UNI-Dome two seasons ago.
Compounding Creighton's problems tonight is trying to figure out ways to score points against an improved Northern Iowa defense. The Panthers are allowing 59.6 points per game - an improvement of almost seven points per game froom last season - and have not allowed any team to score more than 70 points this season.
Half of the Panthers' 16 opponents have scored 60 points or fewer, with five failing to break 50.
"We felt that if were to compete for a championship, we needed to find ways other than just trying to score more points than our opponents," McDermott said. "Last year, we did not do that consistently enough. We knew defense was something we had to get better at. The players understood that, and they've worked hard to get better."
It's helped to have a veteran group to work with, McDermott said. Jacobson, Crawford and sixth man John Little are in their fourth seasons in the program, while Stout, McKowen and several key substitutes are three-season veterans.
"Our guys understand our system, and that makes it easy to make adjustments on the fly," McDermott said. "It's also helped that Ben Jacobson has made great strides defensively. We had to hide him the first couple of years."
Stout, who added about 20 pounds in the offseason, leads the Valley with 40 blocked shots while averaging a team-high 7.9 rebounds per game.
"Grant's added strength allows him to bang down low," McDermott said. "He's a guy that when we make a mistake, he has the ability to erase some of those mistakes."
GO PANTHERS!!!
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