The men’s basketball team earned three consecutive victories over Valparaiso, Missouri State and Evansville to conclude the regular season.

UNI has played Evansville twice prior to this game, with each team winning one game, but the Panthers won the third game handily, defeating the Aces 60-50 in their first round of the State Farm Missouri Valley Conference (MVC) Tournament.

Wyatt Lohaus led the team with 15 points. Meanwhile, Hunter Rhodes had 14 points, four assists and six rebounds, and Klint Carlson continued to showcase his rebounding skills with 10 boards, nine points and two assists.

The Panthers’ offense got things going early on in the contest, but the first half proved to be a competitive one, with both teams going on occasional runs.

By halftime, however, UNI was ahead 10 points, and the second half consisted of the Panthers’ defending their sizable lead.

UNI, shooting 12-16 from the free throw, also had 20 points come from the bench, as well as 18 from inside. There was really no stopping this offense, as their ability to draw the foul this season has proven to be an invaluable asset to their offensive strategy.

The second game of the tournament was a nail biter against Loyola. The Panthers fell just short after a final score of 54-50.

UNI put together a quick drive towards the end of the contest, but with little time they had to battle the buzzer too.

Bennett Koch had four rebounds and 20 points, Lohaus had 10 points and two assists and Rhodes scored nine points and grabbed three rebounds.

UNI shot 9-22 in the first half, as the Panthers simply struggled to find the bottom of the net.

They scored 24 points inside, but Loyola wasn’t fouling as frequently as Evansville. The Panthers made six of their seven free throws.

Loyola was shooting roughly the same percentage as UNI, but was also taking noticeably more shots just to see what would go in. Besides this aspect of the game, both teams were pretty similar in comparison.

As of press time, besting UNI, the Ramblers went on to defeat Bradley (62-54) and are preparing to play Illinois State for the Championship.

Illinois State came into the MVC Tournament defeating Indiana State (77-70) and just recently defeated Southern Illinois in overtime (76-68)

The Panthers finished strong and found themselves with a 16-16 record. They won 7-11 games within the MVC and went 12-4 at home, opposed to 1-9 on the road.