MVC notes: Shockers, Panthers will wait until Sunday to worry about each other
No. 8 Wichita State and No. 11 Northern Iowa spent Thursday pretending they aren’t expected to play on Sunday. The questions will probably come up again.
Until Saturday night, there are plenty of other issues for both teams to ponder.
No one on the Northern Iowa roster has won a game in the MVC Tournament. The Panthers are 0-4 since winning the title in 2010, losing to lower seeds in 2011, 2013 and 2014.
“This group of five seniors, we want to be remembered differently,” forward Marvin Singleton said. “We want to go out there and play our hardest and come out victorius.”
The Panthers came to St. Louis as the No. 4 seed in 2011 and the No. 5 seed in 2012. It lost the past two seasons as the No. 3 seed. This season, the Panthers should come to the arena with a different swagger as the No. 2 seed and nationally ranked.
“There’s a special feeling when you get on the bus to head down to St. Louis every year,” UNI center Seth Tuttle said. “There’s no reason that our team doesn’t have full motivation, momentum, confidence going forward. We know we’re a heck of a ball team.”
Wichita State stayed away from too much talk of a rematch with UNI. The teams split the regular-season meetings, both winning by double-digits at home. The teams enter the tournament as the MVC’s winningest duo, both with 27 wins. In 2012, No. 15 WSU (26 wins) and No. 25 Creighton (25) came to St. Louis with three fewer wins.
“We’re not in the business of looking ahead,” WSU guard Fred VanVleet said. “You can’t get three without getting the first one.”
Welcome to St. Louis – Last season, The Shockers won their first tournament title since 1987 with an experienced crew. They had four seniors and three others who played in the Final Four.
WSU will try to repeat as champion, something it’s never done, with eight players in their first experience in St. Louis.
“Coach (Gregg Marshall) put it in perspective,” WSU guard Ron Baker said. “He asked us how to eat an elephant. Eat an elephant one bite at a time. Tomorrow’s Friday. That’s when we play. That’s important for us because we’ve got a lot of young guys.”
The veterans do try to prepare their teammates for the conditions. New arena. Win or go home. Thousands of Shocker fans will travel to St. Louis and they can count on crowd noise in their favor.
“You can’t let the atmosphere take too much control of what’s actually going on,” freshman Rashard Kelly said. “It’s a great experience, great chance, but we’ve still got to play the way we’ve been playing every game.”
Junior center Bush Wamukota, a transfer, comes to St. Louis off his biggest contribution as a Shocker. He played 13 minutes, matching his season high, and scored four points in Saturday’s 74-60 win over Northern Iowa. His strong defense against Tuttle rescued the Shockers when foul trouble sidelined starter Darius Carter.
“It’s really increasing my confidence as we go down the stretch,” Wamukota said. “Hopefully, I will be able to help the team even more in the games to come.”
First time on the ladder – WSU freshman Corey Henderson Jr. needed some advice Saturday during the celebration after beating Northern Iowa. It was his first time cutting down nets, so he turned to trainer Todd Fagan and asked “What do I do?”
Fagan explained to make two cuts to take a piece of the net, show it to the crowd, and climb down.
“I had never done that before, so it was exciting,” Henderson said. “You just take one of the strings and just cut it off. We were putting it on our hats, so I put it on my hat.”
That’s where Henderson’s piece of the championship net still is, attached to his championship hat, back in Wichita.
Doyle returns – Loyola finished sixth with guard Milton Doyle missing 11 games with an ankle injury. He played nine minutes in the second half in Saturday’s 65-51 win over Missouri State and scored six points.
“He played last game, got in the middle of a close game, and played well,” Ramblers coach Porter Moser said. “Milton was like a coach every day in practice. Sometimes, when guys get injured, they migrate to the training room and you don’t see them. Milton was out there on the bench.”
The Ramblers won a play-in game last season as the No. 10 seed, beating Bradley 74-72 on Doyle’s last-second basket. Playing on Friday in their first season as an MVC member made they feel part of the festivities. Opening on Friday, against third-seeded Indiana State, is a better opportunity. They are one win from the semifinals.
“I think we haven’t been at our best, but I think we’re playing well right now,” Moser said. “These guys are confident. I really think we can do something here, and they want all hands on deck.”
Jacobson named top coach — Northern Iowa’s Ben Jacobson received his third Coach of the Year honor at Thursday’s tournament luncheon.
No. 11 UNI is the second seed after going 16-2 in the MVC and 27-3 overall in the regular season. Its previous ranking of No. 10 is the school’s highest point in the Associated Press poll. The Panthers also won a school-record 16 straight games.
Jacobson received 115 points, 26 first-place votes. Marshall finished second with 86 points and 14 first-place votes, followed by Indiana State’s Greg Lansing (56 points) and Loyola’s Porter Moser (18 points).
The Panthers led the MVC by holding teams to 54.6 points, 39 percent shooting and 31.2 percent from three-point range. A season ago, the Panthers slipped defensively and didn’t play in the post-season.
“These guys made the decision that that was going to change,” Jacobson said.
Jacobson also won the honor in 2009 and 2010 and he becomes the fifth MVC coach to win it three or more times. He is the third coach since 1990 to win Coach of the Year without winning the regular-season title, joining UNI’s Eldon Miller in 1997 and Marshall in 2013. Marshall had won the award the previous three seasons.
Wessel on academic team — WSU junior Evan Wessel claimed a spot on the MVC’s Scholar-Athlete second team with a 3.28 grade-point average in managment.
UNI senior Nate Buss was named Scholar-Athlete of the Year. He carries a 3.50 GPA in general studies.
MVC honors Burwell — The Missouri Valley Conference announced Thursday that it would honor longtime St. Louis Post-Dispatch sports columnist Bryan Burwell by naming its interview room at the MVC Tournament in his name.
Burwell died from cancer in December at 59 years old. Burwell, who covered the MVC Tournament last season, was selected for the U.S. Basketball Writers Association Hall of Fame in February, and was the first African-American to be elected to the USBWA Hall of Fame.
Welcome to the club — Illinois State coach Dan Muller welcomed another member to the two-time MVC Defensive Player of the Year club on Wednesday when Wichita State’s Tekele Cotton repeated with the honor.
Muller won the award twice, in 1996 and 1997, while playing for the Redbirds. He had high praise for Cotton.
“The thing about Tekele is that he can pretty much guard anybody on the floor,” Muller said. “He is so athletic and so good at what he does defensively. It seems like he’s always in the right position and he’s always guarding the other team’s best player.”
Tulsa’s Michael Scott (1989, 1991), Southern Illinois’ Ashraf Amaya (1992, 1993), Southern Illinois’ Darren Brooks (2004, 2005) and Southern Illinois’ Bryan Mullins (2008, 2009) are the other repeat winners of the award.
Worth noting — Evansville will play its final regular-season opponent in its tournament opener for the third time in four seasons. In 2012, the Aces beat Missouri State both times. In 2013, the Aces lost to Indiana State in the tournament after ending the regular-season with a win … The tournament’s top seed has won it 15 times in 38 attempts, eight of the 24 in St. Louis … Bradley, seeded No. 7 in 1998, is the only team to advance from the play-in games to the semifinals. Bradley defeated 10th-seeded Drake and second-seeded Creighton before losing to Missouri State in the semifinals.
This story was originally published March 5, 2015 at 9:21 PM with the headline "MVC notes: Shockers, Panthers will wait until Sunday to worry about each other."