Kwadzo’s shots stun the Shockers

The No. 22 ranked University of Northern Iowa Panthers were able to hold off the Wichita State University Shockers 59-56 in front of 6,723 fans in the McLeod Center Wednesday night. A 15-point Kwadzo Ahelegbe performance in the second half helped electrify the crowd and earn the Panthers their 20th win of the season.

The Panthers (20-2, 11-1 MVC) were able to sustain a late surge by the Shockers (19-5, 8-4 MVC) and now hold a three game lead over Wichita State in the Missouri Valley Conference standings with only six games remaining.

When asked about the conference standings, Panthers head coach Ben Jacobson responded by saying, “I don’t talk about that with our guys. I really don’t. We talked about being tougher than we were at their place on the defensive end of the floor, being tougher on the offensive end of the floor and finishing plays.”

The Shockers were leading 18-10 at the 11 minute mark in the first half, but the Panthers responded with a 15-4 run in the next seven minutes and took a brief 25-22 lead. Wichita State outscored UNI 6-2 over the final four minutes of play and took a 28-27 lead into the locker room.

The second half was a back-and-forth battle between the two teams, with the largest lead of the game coming with 3:20 to play when the Panthers built up an eight point advantage at 56-48. That eight point lead would be short lived as the Graham Hatch hit a pair of free throws and Toure’ Murry buried a three pointer to cut the lead to three. Kwadzo Ahelegbe answered with a pull-up two pointer to push the Panther lead back to five, but again the Shockers answered with a three, this time from J.T. Durley, to make the score 58-56 with just under two minutes to play. Wichita State would miss their last three three-point attempts and UNI’s Kerwin Dunham hit one of two free throws to make the score 59-56.

Ahelegbe led the Panthers in scoring with 18 points on 8-of-18 shooting, which comes after he was 1-for-9 in the first half.

“Coach (Jacobson) has a lot of confidence in me, when I’m making shots and even when I’m missing shots he’s still telling me to shoot,” said Ahelegbe. “(Jacobson) was telling me to shoot and to get to the rim and don’t worry about it.”

“I’ve got confidence in all our guys, specifically with Kwadzo because he works so hard,” said Jacobson. “He worked his tail off this summer to get better and he spends a lot of time shooting shots, so he’s prepared. Sometimes the ball goes in, sometimes it doesn’t. We just want him taking good shots.”

Senior center Jordan Eglseder added 15 points and four rebounds for the Panthers. Senior forward Adam Koch chipped in with 11 points. Lucas O’Rear and Jake Koch came in off the bench to collect 17 rebounds between the two of them for UNI.

The Panthers return to action Saturday night at 5 p.m. when they take on the Southern Illinois University Salukis (13-9, 5-7 MVC). SIU is currently tied for eighth place in the Missouri Valley Conference and have lost two out of their last three games. UNI has won the past four meetings between the two schools including a 61-49 victory over the Salukis in Carbondale, Ill. earlier this season.
 

Be the first to comment on this article!

Add comment


I am not posting spam. I understand posting spam or other comments that are unrelated to this article will cause my comment to be flagged for deletion and possibly cause my IP address to be permanently banned from this server.

Enter the characters in the image above:

log out