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N. Iowa-Bradley Preview

Feb 12, 2010 - 5:16 PM By MATT BECKER STATS Senior Writer

Northern Iowa (22-2) at Bradley (12-12), 2:05 p.m. EDT

Having won all but one of its Missouri Valley Conference games, Northern Iowa needs to win just one more to clinch its first outright league title in 30 years at the Division I level.

The 19th-ranked Panthers look to lock up the top seed for next month's conference tournament when they visit Bradley on Saturday.

Northern Iowa (22-2, 13-1) earned at least a share of the MVC regular-season title with Wednesday's 57-48 win at Drake. The Panthers, who were conference co-champions with Creighton last season, need to win only one of their final four league games to make sure they won't have to share this year's crown.

Northern Iowa, which joined Division I in 1980-81, hasn't earned a regular-season conference title outright since winning Division II's North Central Conference in 1964.

The Panthers already have defeated each of the remaining conference opponents on the schedule, but their only meeting of the season with Bradley on Jan. 12 went down to the wire.

They led 51-48 before Sam Maniscalco's layup with 21 seconds remaining sliced Bradley's deficit to one. Northern Iowa's Kwadzo Ahelegbe then went 1 of 2 from the free throw line and the Braves weren't able to get off another shot attempt en route to a 52-50 defeat, their fourth straight loss in the series.

Ali Farokhmanesh had a team-best 14 points for UNI, which limited Bradley to 35.8 percent shooting and forced an opponent season-high 20 turnovers.

That kind of stifling defense has keyed the Panthers' rise to the top of the MVC.

Northern Iowa ranks second in the nation in scoring defense, allowing an average of 54.7 points, and held Drake to one field goal in the final 6:36 - a meaningless 3-pointer with 23 seconds left.

Although UNI has won six in a row since a 60-51 loss at Wichita State on Jan. 19, Wednesday's victory was its fourth straight by single digits and the previous three were by a total of just seven points. The Panthers trailed Drake by three points with 6:36 left before putting the game out of reach with a 15-0 run.

"We'd rather not have it be that type of situation where we need to make a lot of plays at the end to win games, but I guess it's something that we're comfortable doing," senior Adam Koch said. "We just do a good job of staying levelheaded and knowing that if we stay fundamentally sound and focused we'll make some plays."

Koch averages a team-best 12.9 points but had one of his worst offensive performances of the season against the Braves, finishing with eight points on 2-of-9 shooting.

Bradley (12-12, 7-7) is coming off Tuesday's 62-61 loss to Illinois State. The Braves led by as many as 14 points in the first half but shot only 35.7 percent after the break to lose for the third time in five games.

Maniscalco led all scorers with 17 points, and he's averaging 17.7 points on 58.3 percent shooting in his last three games. He scored 15 against the Panthers last month.

Northern Iowa wasn't ranked in the first meeting of the season and this will be Bradley's first game against a Top 25 opponent since defeating then-No. 20 Illinois 72-68 at the Las Vegas Invitational on Nov. 28.