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SAN DIEGO — Three years had passed since the worst collapse in NCAA Tournament history, and Paul Jesperson, playing overseas, alone and bored, decided he was ready to watch a clip that he’d long avoided.
The game was over. Northern Iowa was up by 12 with less than 40 seconds to play. This second-round NCAA Tournament game had been decided — the teams just needed to see zeroes on the clock to make it official.
What happened next is what Jesperson watched. The most traumatic defeat, perhaps in this sport’s history. Turnover, turnover, turnover, turnovers. Three layups, a dunk, an and-one and a clutch 3-pointer.
Somehow, Northern Iowa would go on to lose, watching a 69-57 lead evaporate in a 92-88 double-OT loss.
Only two days prior, Jesperson became an NCAA Tournament legend by sinking a half-court buzzer beater to stun Texas. It’s a bank shot that’s replayed in every March Madness montage. Forty-eight hours later, he’d suffered a defeat more stinging than the joy accompanying any victory.
So, he sat there and watched the replay. Then he closed his computer, and has never seen it since.
“It was tough to rewatch,” Jesperson told The Athletic on Thursday, acknowledging the obvious. “I’m not gonna lie.”
On Friday, Northern Iowa will play in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since that game. Its matchup against St. John’s comes on the 10th anniversary of that fateful loss, one that’s still the most recent March memory for a program that had once become accustomed to late-season success.
Jesperson, now a head coach for the G League’s Valley Suns, has an off-day on Friday in San Diego, with his team playing Thursday-Saturday back-to-back against the Clippers’ affiliate just a few miles from his alma mater’s game. He hopes to be in attendance.
“It was a difficult time. It still is,” Jesperson said. “It’s not haunting me or anything at this point. At the moment, it was tough. The weeks and months after it were tough. But now that I’m on this side of it … I have an appreciation for it.”
Jesperson said he’s never discussed the fateful game with any player he’s coached at the NBA, G League or collegiate level. But the loss that ended his storied collegiate career still very much informs how he coaches and how he views late-game situations.
The Panthers are still led by head coach Ben Jacobson, now in his 20th year in Cedar Falls. In the first decade, his program danced four times and won four NCAA Tournament games, nearly unheard of for a Missouri Valley program.
“It took a good two, three years for me,” Jacobson said on Thursday, when asked to reflect on that loss. “Just rolling through it in my mind. Because as coaches and as leaders, I think we feel such a strong responsibility to make sure our players are in the best possible position to be successful.
“It took me a while to figure out, man, what in the world could you have done differently.”
On the TruTV broadcast that night, as the clock ticked under 40 seconds, play-by-play voice Carter Blackburn was lauding Northern Iowa, contextualizing the win and the Panthers’ path to the Sweet 16 as an 11 seed.
“That lull halfway through the season, safe to say that’s over,” Blackburn boasted of UNI. “This will be 14 (wins) out of 15 (games).”
And could you blame him? Even after two turnovers, the latter committed by Jesperson, the lead was still six with 22 seconds to play, and it was Northern Iowa’s ball. Even in that scenario, the odds of a loss were under a percentage point.
But the turnovers continued, the Aggies made everything, and Murphy’s Law of everything going wrong played out in the most tangible and grueling of ways.
Fast forward to today, and Northern Iowa’s game against St. John’s has no actual connection to what happened 10 years ago. The players in this game were children for that one. It’s a different season, story and collegiate basketball backdrop. But for everyone who lived that loss, watched it and was pained by it, there’s a chance to symbolically move on.
Jesperson, however, doesn’t view it as a chance to flush the memory or exorcise the demons. Those will always be there.
It’s just that, now, he’s learned to live with what happened.
“It’s not something I shy away from, or turn the conversation short when someone starts,” Jesperson said. “It’s part of it, right? It’s part of sports.”
