UNI can’t find answers in second-round loss

SEATTLE (AP) — One time down the floor, the Louisville defense looked like zone. The next, it was man-to-man.

Northern Iowa’s players had trouble figuring it out, let alone doing anything about it, and so did the coach.

The result: Not enough touches for Seth Tuttle and not nearly enough offense to prevent a 66-53 loss to the Cardinals on Sunday in the NCAA Tournament.

“They did a great job not letting me get anything easy,” Tuttle said. “They kept it up for 40 minutes.”

Tuttle finished with only seven shots and 14 hard-earned points and the fifth-seeded Panthers (31-4) shot 39 percent — nine points lower than their regular-season average.

Fourth-seeded Louisville (26-8), led by Terry Rozier’s 25 points, advanced to the East Regional semifinals next Friday against North Carolina State. It’s the program-record fourth straight trip for coach Rick Pitino’s team.

“Tonight, we played our best game of the season,” Pitino said.

Meanwhile, Northern Iowa set the program record for wins this season, but came up short in its attempt to recreate the 2010 victory over a different blueblood (Kansas) and make another trip to the second weekend.

“We didn’t get to the Sweet 16,” coach Ben Jacobson said. “But they just saw the best four months of basketball our program’s ever had, and that’s saying a lot.”

The finale was the grinding affair that pretty much everyone expected between two teams ranked in the nation’s top 20 in defense.

Except in Rozier’s case. He darted his way around the floor, finding open spots for jumpers, floaters and creating enough contact to get to the line nine times. His final numbers: 8 for 13 from the floor, 8 for 9 from the line, five rebounds and the seven assists, including two sweet alley-oop passes to Montrezl Harrell that put the game away.

“You see all these dunks. We see 15 of them at every practice, where we say, ‘Get out of the way or someone’s getting hurt,’” Pitino said.

Good as Rozier and Harrell were, Louisville really won this one with defense — the way it has been all season.

The Cards forced 10 turnovers and Pitino’s decision to start 6-foot-10 center Mangok Mathiang set the tone against Tuttle, who found little room in the post.

Jacobson all but conceded he got outcoached by the man with 52 career victories in the NCAA Tournament. After making four of its first six shots, Northern Iowa went 4-for-14 the rest of the first half and trailed by nine.

“We got off to a good start and found some openings against that zone,” Jacobson said. “But they made some adjustments, and I didn’t adjust soon enough to find some different ways to get Seth the ball.”

The 66 points were the most UNI had allowed all season in a game that didn’t go to overtime.