Northern Iowa Panthers Final Four Odds, Picks & Predictions: If you are from the Missouri Valley Conference, as the University of Northern Iowa is, and you knock off the top team in the nation – Kansas – in the early rounds of the men's NCAA Basketball Tournament you will get lots of attention. And that's the case this week with Northern Iowa. Installed by the NCAA Tournament selection committee as the No. 9 seeded team in the Midwest Region, Northern Iowa has advanced to the "Sweet 16" at the expense of eighth-seed UNLV and No. 1 Kansas.
On Friday ( 9:35 p.m. ET), the Panthers face another challenge having to play Tom Izzo's Michigan State Spartans. In that game the Panthers are listed as single-point underdogs. College basketball oddsmakers at Bodog.com list the Panthers as 15-to-4 odds longshots to make the NCAA Tournament Final Four. The Panthers odds of winning the tournament championship are 40-to-1.
While often called Cinderella by pundits, Panthers players and coaches don't really see it that way. The Panthers have been one of the nation's top mid-major programs for nearly a decade, long before they ousted top-seeded Kansas 69-67 in the second round on Saturday.
Northern Iowa (30-4) has reached the NCAA tournament in five of the past seven years. All that was missing from its resume was a victory, but after losing four first-round games in a row – each by five points, strangely enough – the Panthers broke through last weekend with wins over UNLV and Kansas.
Their tournament future looks bright for the Panthers. Especially if they can pull off another upset Friday night. If Northern Iowa can manage a win, they will face the winner of the 2/6 matchup between Ohio State and Tennessee.
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