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Men's Basketball
Looking Back at Eldon Miller - UNI Upsets Missouri in the 1990 NCAA Tournament
Former University of Northern Iowa men's basketball coach Eldon Miller will be returning to Cedar Falls this weekend as an assistant coach for UNC-Pembroke, who the Panthers face in an exhibition game on Sat., Nov. 7, at 12:05 p.m. in the McLeod Center. UNC-Pembroke is led by second-year head coach Ben Miller, the son of Eldon and Dee Miller. The Panthers will honor the Miller family by making Saturday Eldon & Dee Miller Day in the McLeod Center. This week UNI athletics will look back on highlights throughout Miller's career as the Panthers' head coach. Today brings us to our final stop on the Eldon Miller highlight tour as we relive the glory of the UNI Panthers' upset victory over the No. 3-seeded Missouri Tigers in the first round of the 1990 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament in Richmond, Va.
UNI vs. Missouri After a remarkable three-game run through the AMCU Tournament to claim the league's automatic bid, UNI and head coach Eldon Miller learned they would face Missouri in Richmond, Va., in the first round of the NCAA tournament. The Tigers were the third seed in the Southeast Regional and had held the top spot in the national rankings for several weeks in January and February. UNI was a 14-seed and was making the school's first-ever NCAA tournament appearance as a Division I school. Among all the differences in the schools' basketball backgrounds, there was one notable connection. Missouri's head coach was Norm Stewart - the same coach that had gotten his start at UNI from 1962-67 by leading the Panthers to a 97-42 mark over that period. Stewart's Missouri squad had a 26-5 record, the Big Eight Conference regular season championship and a No. 6 national rank at the end of the season.
The week leading up to the tournament opener was full of interview requests and national exposure for UNI. When it came time to tip-off on Friday morning, the Panthers showed they were well-worth the spotlight.
UNI jumped out to an early first-half lead of 22-8 on its way to 8-of-12 shooting from three-point range in the opening half. A Mizzou three-pointer just before the buzzer cut the Panthers' lead to 42-31 at the intermission, but the contest was far from decided. The second half was a series of pivotal runs by each team. Missouri opened with a 7-0 run that closed the gap to 42-38, but the Panthers answered with an 8-0 run of their own. After seeing the lead stretched back to 50-38, the Tigers responded and trimmed the margin to 54-51. When Missouri's All-American forward Doug Smith fouled out, UNI answered yet again with another run that put them up, 65-53. Missouri was not finished yet. They stormed back with 11 straight points to cut the Panthers' margin to one. A basket and two free throws by Jason Reese sandwiched All-American guard Anthony Peeler's only basket of the game. Trailing by three, Missouri's Nathan Buntin converted a three-point play to tie the game at 71-71 with 0:22 remaining in the contest. UNI called a timeout on their possession with 10 seconds left, and Maurice Newby, known for his clutch three-point baskets in the AMCU tournament, checked in off the Panthers' bench. After the inbounds pass, Dale Turner attempted a drive to the basket and found Newby behind the arc. Newby launched his shot from five feet beyond the line and drained it with two seconds left to give the Panthers a 74-71 victory. The shot still stands as one of the biggest in school history. In the school's first ever Division I tournament appearance, UNI grabbed the national spotlight with a balanced attack. Reese finished with 18 points and 15 rebounds to tie UNI's all-time scoring record. Troy Muilenburg had 16 points and Brad Hill added 11, all in the first half. Dale Turner set the school record for assists in a season by dishing out six assists to go along with his 10 points. Perhaps most notably, Cedrick McCullough shut down All-American guard Anthony Peeler, holding him to three points in a season where he averaged 17 points a contest. Newby finished with nine points, all from beyond the arc. Asked about the Panthers' balanced attack, Brad Hill was quoted in the Richmond Times-Dispatch as saying, "There was only one way we were going to beat this team, and that was for each one of us to take a turn and step up and do it when it had to be done." After the game, Miller commented on his team's late game heroics: "This team has been remarkable in close games. As long as I've been coaching basketball, I don't think I've ever had a team play better from behind and in clutch situations." As for the feelings and expectations associated with the game, Miller said, "You can't beat this feeling. But we like to keep it in perspective. To be quite frank, we came into this tournament expecting to win. The day we don't expect to win, we're going to find something else to do."
Eldon Miller was the head coach at UNI from 1987-1998 and coached the second-most games in UNI men's basketball history. He led the Panthers to their first NCAA Division I tournament in 1990 after winning the Mid-Continent Conference Tournament to clinch the league's automatic bid. Fourteenth-seeded UNI went on to upset third-seeded Missouri in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Miller's tenure at UNI also included a victory over 20th-ranked Iowa in the UNI-Dome in 1990 before a state-record crowd of 22,797. In March of 1997, Miller was named the 1996-1997 Rawlings Missouri Valley Conference Coach of the Year. He was inducted into the UNI Athletics Hall of Fame in 2002.
Looking Back at Eldon Miller Links |
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