Wauwatosa East's Leon Bond threw down an audacious dunk for Northern Iowa in the second half of the Missouri Valley Conference championship game, a spark as his team defeated Illinois-Chicago, 84-69, to reach the NCAA tournament.
LOOK OUT!
Leon Bond III throws down a MASSIVE slam for @UNI_MBB 🤯 pic.twitter.com/fkyPcQFEBZ
— CBS Sports College Basketball 🏀 (@CBSSportsCBB) March 8, 2026
The sixth-seeded Panthers – the lowest seed to ever win the conference tournament – won four games in four days at "Arch Madness" in St. Louis to punch their ticket March 8. It's a team that starts three Wisconsin high-school alumni: Bond, De Pere's Will Hornseth and DeForest's Max Weisbrod.
Bond finished with 10 points, none louder than his dunk with 13:30 to go in the game and Northern Iowa nursing a 54-51 lead.
Hornseth had 10 points and Weisbrod had 9 in the victory. The Panthers defeated Bradley, a team coached by former Marquette University star and UW-Green Bay coach Brian Wardle (and led by Milwaukee Pius alumnus Jaquan Johnson) in the semifinal March 7, 73-69.
Bond, who began his career at Virginia but has been at NIU the last two seasons, averages 11.9 points per game, the second-highest mark on the team. Hornseth (11.2), voted the league's most improved player in the postseason awards, sits third. Bond also leads the team with 0.8 blocks per game, part of what granted him a spot on the conference's all-defense team.
Northern Iowa last made the NCAA Tournament in 2016.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wauwatosa's Leon Bond throws down monster dunk as team nets NCAA berth