Mid-major madness: Pioneers-Panthers

College basketball got underway with its usual whimper on Monday, but Friday is the day things really get started, what with 125 games involving Division I teams happening all around the country. And I’ll be going to one of them — a pretty decent mid-major showdown, right here in Denver.

Northern Iowa, defending champion of the Missouri Valley Conference, is coming to town to face the Denver Pioneers, picked to finish second in the Sun Belt’s West Division. And Becky, amazing wife that she is, has agreed to let me go, even though it means she’ll have an extra couple of hours of “evening duty” with the girls at the tail end of an exhausting week. (Have I mentioned lately that I love Becky?)

UNI returns all five starters from last year’s NCAA Tournament team, so it’s no surprise that big things are expected of them. The Panthers rank fourth in College Insider’s “Mid-Major Top 25,” behind only Butler, Gonzaga and Siena. SI’s Seth Davis writes that Northern Iowa is “leading a resurgence in the Missouri Valley Conference,” and says they’re one of “nearly a dozen…mid-majors [who] are beginning the season with legitimate hopes of reaching the tournament’s second weekend.” ESPN’s Fran Fraschilla opines similarly:

Last season, the Panthers came out of nowhere — actually Cedar Falls — to win the Missouri Valley Conference and a school-record 23 games before falling to Purdue 61-56 in the NCAA tournament. They did it playing fundamentally sound basketball, shooting 75 percent from the free throw line while turning the ball over only 12 times per game. The great news for coach Ben Jacobson is that all five starters and 92 percent of the team’s scoring return. The uniqueness of this team is there is no one star player. Adam Koch is a 6-foot-8, 245-pound workhorse inside, and the Panthers’ backcourt of Ali Farokhmanesh and Kwadzo Ahelegbe is rock solid. This is a team capable of getting to the Sweet 16.

As for Denver, nobody’s talking about a Sweet 16 run — the Pioneers, after all, have never even been to the NCAA Tournament — but they, too, return all of their starters, and there’s a lot of optimism for this season. This is something of a novelty: DU has been pretty bad in recent years, losing 43 straight road games from 2006-2009 and going 4-25, 11-19, and 15-16 in the last three seasons. But note the trend: the Pioneers have been steadily improving since their nadir in 2006-07, after which former coach Terry Carroll was fired and former Air Force and Princeton coach Joe Scott was hired. The Pioneers won their last two road games of 2008-09, and this is supposed to be their breakout season, or so the thinking goes.

Coach Scott isn’t the only reason Denver is expected to continue improving, and perhaps even make a run at a Big Dance bid. Senior guard Nate Rohnert (on Twitter at @naterohnert) is another crucial reason. Here’s what the excellent college basketball blog Rush The Court had to say about Rohnert in naming him one of its Mountain Region Impact Players for 2009-10:

Nate Rohnert is the type of player coaches love because you pretty much have to cast a net over him to get him off of the basketball floor. Described by coach Joe Scott as “a relentless worker” who’s always in the gym trying to improve his skills, Rohnert, a 6′5 senior guard/forward, averaged 37 minutes per game last year, leading the entire Sun Belt and ranking 21st in the nation. To that end, he also led his team in points (15.3 PPG), rebounds (5.4 RPG), assists (4.7 APG), and steals (1.3 SPG). Certainly no surprise that Scott anointed him with the captaincy of the 2009-10 edition of the Pioneers. Denver lands somewhere in the 3rd to 5th range in terms of most preseason predictions for the Sun Belt overall, and they have never been to the NCAA Tournament. We’re willing to bet that this is something that bothers Mr. Rohnert and is something he’s thinking about during all that time in the gym on his own. Despite the fact that Denver returns its four other starters and most of the scoring from last year’s 9-9 Sun Belt team, it will be hard to get by the likes of Western Kentucky and North Texas. One thing of which we’re sure — it’ll be a pleasure to watch Nate Rohnert make a run at it.

More broadly, here’s a season preview for the Pioneers from Blogging the Bracket:

The only team in the Sun Belt to have never made the NCAA Basketball Tournament could rid itself of that title this season. (Now, for hockey, it’s a completely different story.) Joe Scott’s Princeton offense is really taking root in the Mile High City, and the Pioneers seem to have put their road woes behind them. DU won two straight road games at the end of the regular season, ending a drought that began after a February 11, 2006 win at Middle Tennessee. Scott’s team features all five starters from a year ago, led by 6-5 G/F Nate Rohnert (15.3 ppg, 5.4 rpg, 4.7 apg), a serious threat for SBC Player of the Year, 6-7 F Rob Lewis (12.9 ppg, 5.5 rpg), 6-3 G Brian Stafford (11.4 ppg). Plus, 6-9 forward Andrew Hooper actually led the Sun Belt three-point percentage, nailing 46.6 percent of his attempts as he averaged a little more than 9 points per contest. The Pioneers were as solid on both offense (47.9 team FG percentage) and defense (top 25 in the nation in scoring defense), as you’d expect a Princeton-style team to be.

So… can Denver start its season with a bang by upsetting the country’s fourth-best mid-major team, the defending champion and current favorite in the mighty mighty MVC? We’ll find out Friday. Last year, when these same schools opened the season against each other in Cedar Falls, the Pioneers played the Panthers tough, losing 61-56 after leading by 1 at halftime.

But those were very different teams. The UNI loss was the first of five straight defeats to open the season for Denver; meanwhile, Northern Iowa followed up the win by losing 6 of its next 11 games (before catching fire, going 17-4 to finish the season). This year, expectations are much higher — on both sides.

UNI will be a heavy favorite, no doubt. But with the game at Magness Arena, who knows? Despite my soft spot (and t-shirt) for the Missouri Valley Conference, I’d love to see the hometown team pull off the shocker.

Above all, though, I’m just excited to be able to watch some quality mid-major basketball. I’ll be going to the game with fellow sports dork Kristy. I can’t wait!

Goooo Pioneers!!! Beeeeat Panthers!!!