MINNEAPOLIS — The famous Stanford-Harvard game is 12 years old now, but that hasn’t stopped Northern Iowa from using it as a motivator.
Harvard is still the only No. 16 seed to knock off a No. 1 in both the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments. The Crimson upset top-seeded Stanford 71-67 in 1998.
And as soon as that game was mentioned during a press conference Saturday, Jacqui Kalin’s eyes widened and the UNI point guard started smiling.
She and her teammates watched the final eight minutes of Harvard’s improbable win during their 3½-hour bus ride Friday from Cedar Falls, Iowa, to Minneapolis.
Not that Kalin needed the reminder, but the replay simply emphasized the tournament’s unpredictable nature.
The 16th-seeded Panthers need a lot to go right when they take on No. 1 seed Nebraska at 6:06 p.m. Sunday in Williams Arena. But they still know they have a chance.
“That’s why March Madness is so awesome,” said Kalin, a sophomore out of Sioux City North. “It’s a fun time of year. That Harvard-Stanford game just gives you the knowledge that it is possible, nothing’s impossible. That’s why we play the game.”
UNI’s already proven that.
The Panthers, who began the year 1-4, still had a losing record at the start of February. They even dropped three of their final four regular season games heading into last week’s Missouri Valley tournament.
But as the fifth seed, UNI reeled off three wins in three days to earn the program’s first bid to the NCAA’s 64-team field.
“It’s definitely always been a goal of ours just to make it here,” junior Erin Brocka said Saturday. “As we started nearing closer and closer to our conference tournament, we were all like, ‘This is definitely an attainable goal for us.’ We all just locked in to that. Once it happened, it was just a great feeling.”
The players did take some time to celebrate the achievement, but they’ve been preparing for Sunday’s matchup with the Huskers ever since.
UNI was 2-1 against Creighton, a team that battled with Nebraska until the final moments of a 69-56 NU win Dec. 9. The Panthers also lost early season games to Missouri and Iowa State.
But records are meaningless now, and UNI coach Tanya Warren is working to get her team to understand that. Showing the Harvard-Stanford game was one way to get her point across.
“If we can play fearless — instead of fearful — anything can happen,” Warren said.
Contact the writer:
402-473-9585, jon.nyatawa@owh.com
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