ST. LOUIS — The Drake Bulldogs pulled off the upset Friday, beating the top-seeded UNI Panthers in the Missouri Valley Conference tournament, 77-56.
Drake had a solid 20-13 regular season record, but the vast majority of their success came outside of the conference. 10 of their 13 losses came in conference play, which landed them the 8-seed going into Arch Madness.
The Bulldogs topped Illinois State 75-65 on Thursday to advance to a third matchup with Northern Iowa.
The Panthers came into the day with a 25-5 regular season record and the top seed in the MVC. They were heavily favored to win this year's Arch Madness and punch an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
But that didn't happen.
UNI had no trouble with Drake during the conference season this year, beating the Bulldogs by a combined 37 points.
This time around, the only lead the Panthers had was 2-0 on a bucket they got from Isaiah Brown around two minutes into the game. Drake's Jonah Jackson hit a three on the very next possession, and UNI was playing catch-up from there.
Drake led 43-33 at halftime.
UNI would come out of the break firing on all cylinders, cutting the Bulldogs' lead down to as low as two. But the Panthers hit a wall about eight minutes into the second half.
Austin Phyfe hit a lay-up with 12:36 left in the game. After that, no one in a Panther uniform scored again for another 10-plus minutes.
That was plenty of time for Drake to keep piling onto their lead. It was a two-point game going into UNI's scoring drought. At the end of it, the Bulldogs were up by 20.
There wasn't nearly enough time for UNI to recover at that point, and the Bulldogs came out with a historic 21-point upset victory.
MVC Player of the Year AJ Green did all he could, but his 19-point outing wasn't enough. Aside from Isaiah Brown, who scored 11, no other Panther put up more than nine points, including a combined eight points from the bench.
Roman Penn was the backbone of Drake's offense, nearly putting up a triple-double with 26 points, eight rebounds and eight assists. Liam Robbins, Anthony Murphy and Garrett Sturtz all finished in double-figures as well.
With the win, the Bulldogs move on to play Bradley in the semifinals Saturday at 2:35 p.m.
The loss ends the Panthers' regular season with a 25-6 record. Their chances at an NCAA Tournament bid now must come as an at-large selection.
With a win at Colorado and their only non-conference loss coming by just five points to a power-five bubble team in West Virginia, don't count UNI out just yet.