Illinois State & Northern Iowa
Both Illinois State and Northern Iowa returned a lot of players from last year’s teams and were ranked one and two in the Valley’s preseason poll. Neither team has secured a top-100 win, they’ve done a nice job with those teams within the top-200. Each owns four such victories.
Each defeated Furman and UNI has significant wins over South Dakota State, Oakland and UC Irvine. The Redbirds’ top wins are over Charlotte, Coastal Carolina and Cornell.
While Illinois State scores (81.2 ppg), Northern Iowa leads the nation in scoring defense (58.0) and there is star power on these teams. Two all-conference returners Chase Walker and Johnny Kinziger are the headliners at Illinois State and all-league guard Trey Campbell leads the way at UNI.
But both of these teams have multiple key contributors. Leon Bond III is UNI’s leading scorer (14.1), second leading rebounder and connecting over 46 percent of the time from deep.
Rookie guard Ty’Reek Coleman, Ty Pence and Boden Skunberg give coach Ryan Pedon five starters that are double-digit scorers.
Illinois State’s weekend narrow loss to Utah State would have been a statement win for the Birds, but they fell by five points. Northern Iowa’s date with Saint Mary’s this week is a similar situation. A Panther win pushes them into at-large competition.
Neither of these teams have any margin for error during the conference season. Where Belmont could perhaps win just sixteen league games, UNI and ILS need to win 17 or 18.
Northern Iowa’s Ben Jacobson is coaching in his twentieth season and is the Valley’s all-time winningest coach of conference contests has accomplished great things in Cedar Falls.
During Jacobson’s career the Panthers have defeated, two, top-ranked teams, participated in four NCAA Tournaments and has won four NCAA Tournament games. However, UNI hasn’t won a league title since 2022 and hasn’t gone to ‘The Big Dance’ since 2016.
Illinois State has missed every edition of March Madness since 1998, but Ryan Pedon’s team won the College Basketball Insider Tournament last year.