Northern Iowa Basketball: 2023-24 season preview and outlook for the Panthers

2023-24 Northern Iowa Basketball season outlook

Jacobson has won five, MVC ‘Coach of the Year’ awards and UNI, Drake and Bradley have established themselves as the upper tier of the league. Any of those three should win the Valley regular season title, but Belmont, Indiana State and Missouri State could win it.

There are six, legitimate contenders for this year’s MVC title.

How well Jacobson integrates Heise and Hutson into a relatively set lineup will be one important factor in this team’s success. UNI has more experience than any other Valley team and it is productive experience.

The development of Duax, Wolf and the three talented freshmen is an X-factor for this team. If those five grow into their roles, UNI might be an unstoppable Missouri Valley Conference force. Most of Jacobson’s players have been together for at least three years and they know one another’s tendencies and Jacobson’s system.

UNI typically plays more of a ‘pack the lane’ defense and doesn’t allow easy shots. They allowed a very respectable 69.9 points-per-game, but that is a bit high for a Panther squad. With Hutson there to clog the middle and a superior defender in Heise returning, expect that scoring average to drop.

Three-point shooting is key for every college basketball team, but particularly so for the Panthers. Born (37%) and Wolf (36%) were the only main rotation players with long distance percentages better than the prescribed 35%. That has to improve. UNI was also uncharacteristically poor from the free throw line (.697), which is not good enough to win tight games.

Born and Drake’s DeVries are the best known stars in the league and the league title could come down to which star is able to best include his teammates. Drake’s transfers and freshmen have similar talent to this UNI team, so how well DeVries and Born utilize their talented teammates will be interesting comparisons.

Bradley’s four high-level returners could sneak past both of the Iowa-based schools as coach Brian Wardle’s teams play tenacious defense and often win games others think they should lose.

Over the past five years, either departed Loyola Chicago or one of these three teams has won the regular season title, the postseason tournament or been in that title game. UNI has won two championships and reached one tournament title game. Bradley has won two Arch Madness trophies and one conference championship and Drake has been to three straight tournament title games and won last year’s championship over Bradley.

These three could be battling it out for the top spot again.