SAN DIEGO – Trey Campbell came a long way from Cedar Falls, Iowa, to get to this point. He even made another valiant push to take it ever farther here Friday when he led No. 12-seed Northern Iowa in the first round of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament against No. 5-seed St. John’s.
But something was definitely off for him and the Panthers right from the start. They couldn’t hit shots. They couldn’t slow down the game the way they normally do. In the end, they couldn’t win, falling to the Red Storm 79-53 on March 20.
Campbell, UNI’s senior guard, led UNI with 14 points.
“It wasn’t what we anticipated, I would say,” UNI head coach Ben Jacobson said afterward. “Man, we’ve got a good basketball team. And just, at the start of the game, obviously shifted a lot of the rhythm or momentum … and just put us in a tough spot. For me, I wish I could do that part over.”
The Panthers couldn’t handle St. John’s early defensive pressure and hit just one of their first 10 shots as they fell behind 20-3. That’s exactly what St. John’s wanted to happen. The Red Storm under Hall of Fame coach Rick Pitino tried to prevent UNI from establishing its trademark slow tempo.
They also wanted to win the battle at the 3-point line. And they did. St. John’s outscored UNI 30-9 from beyond the arc.
“We were really concerned about this game because of their pace,” Pitino said.
'This was an incredible year' for UNI
UNI entered the NCAA Tournament ranked No. 1 nationally in scoring defense with just 61.3 points per game allowed. But by halftime, the Panthers trailed 47-28. After halftime, they couldn’t cut the lead to less than a 13-point margin even though the Red Storm scored only 32 points in the second half.
“We just need to slow down,” Campbell said. “They wanted to speed us up, get us going, get us jumping in the air, throwing passes. That's what they did that first kind of few of minutes.”
And so ends the quaint college basketball story of Campbell, the hometown recruit from Cedar Falls High. The basketball universe doesn’t seem to make players like him as much anymore – a four-year starter in college who played for the same college team for four years in the same city where he played high school hoops.
He guided the Panthers to their first NCAA Tournament berth in 10 seasons by helping them win four games in four days as the 6-seed in the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament earlier this month. That earned them a berth here in Southern California, where a noisy contingent of purple-and-gold-clad sat in a section of seats across the court from the UNI bench.
“This was an incredible year,” forward Tristan Smith said afterward. “I mean, we had highs and we had lows. And I think it just goes to the credit and the culture that the coach and the staff has built here. We were able to withstand them all.”
The Panthers returned 11 players from last year’s team and pride themselves on high school recruiting and player retention.
They just couldn’t overcome that first half. Big East Conference player of the year Zuby Ejiofor led St. John’s with 14 points and 11 rebounds.
“I'm really, really thankful and grateful for the relationships we've got with our players,” said Jacobson, UNI’s coach since 2006. “And so we can sit down this week and talk about coming back, because what you do is you get back, you do it again, you get back here. And now we've got a little bit of experience with some of these guys that will be back next year.”
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: UNI basketball season ends with loss to St. John's in NCAA Tournament