St. Louis -- The Drake University men's basketball team became the first No. 8 seed in the history of the Missouri Valley Conference tournament to knock out the No. 1 team with a 77-56 win over UNI Friday afternoon at the Enterprise Center.
Roman Penn finished with a game-high 26 points to go with eight assists and eight rebounds. Penn scored 19 of his career-high 26 points in the second half, leading the charge for Drake (20-13) as it pulled away for the 21-point victory and its second-straight 20-win season.
"We continue to believe in each other, and we went into this tournament saying every game is just a new 40-minute game," said Drake head coach
Darian DeVries. "And we really approached it that way today."
Jonah Jackson started the scoring for Drake with a 3-pointer on the wing to give Drake a 3-2 lead. After scoring first, UNI (25-6) struggled and allowed Drake to build up an early seven-point lead.
Liam Robbins poured in seven points in a two-minute burst to help Drake extend its lead to 15 points with 5:17 remaining in the half.
With Robbins' inside presence and strong perimeter pressure from the entire roster, the Bulldogs held UNI to 2-of-13 shooting the first 9:38 of the game.
On the next possession, Penn dropped in a jumper to give Drake its largest lead to that point. UNI cut the lead down to just 10 at the half, but Drake led by double-digits for the final 6:32 of the half.
Drake's 43 first-half points matched its scoring output in the entirety of Drake's home loss to UNI one week prior. The Bulldogs shot 58.6 percent and a blistering 60.0 percent (6-of-10) from behind the arc.
The Panthers shot only 27.3 percent from 3-point range and missed each of their first seven attempts from deep.
"Our challenge to them [Drake] is just be the best us we can be today, and we'll take the results," DeVries said. "I thought these guys really kept believing. It started yesterday and then today again."
To start the second half, UNI came out firing and cut the lead down to just two points going into the first media timeout of the second half. The two teams traded baskets and went into the under-12 media timeout with Drake leading, 50-48.
Both teams went cold from the field for several possessions, but the Bulldogs went on a short 6-0 run to get the lead back up to eight.
"I thought we got a little sped up coming out of halftime at the offensive end, and that got us a little disjointed," DeVries said. "They hit a few shots early to cut that lead pretty quickly down to two. I give our guys credit coming out of the timeout and things. I thought they settled down a bit, really dug in more defensively and made things hard."
The Panthers called a timeout to try to regain momentum, but Penn knocked down a timely three to extend the lead to 11 going with just over eight minutes remaining.
Drake continued its run as the Panthers could not get any shots to go while Drake put together an 18-0 run before UNI sank a 3-pointer to end a 10-minute scoring drought.
UNI began to hit its shots in the final minutes, but it was too late as the Bulldogs held on for the victory.
In addition to Penn's near triple-double, a trio of Bulldogs finished just shy of double-doubles.
Robbins played limited minutes due to foul trouble but still poured in 17 points with nine rebounds and four blocks to move into third on the MVC single-season blocks list with 97 this season.
Anthony Murphy finished with 12 points and seven rebounds, including 11 first-half points on 4-of-4 shooting from the field.
Garrett Sturtz scored 10 points behind 6-of-7 shooting from the free-throw line and grabbed nine rebounds. The guard also drew an impressive eight fouls.
The Bulldogs will face the winner of Bradley vs. Southern Illinois on Saturday at 2:35 p.m. Drake is just the second team in MVC history to be ranked No. 7 or lower and advance to the semifinals.
