Northern Iowa can thank Bennett Koch's brothers for bringing in its top player
Adam and Jake Koch were also stars at UNI, where their youngest brother is thriving
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8 min read
Nearly eight years ago, Bennett Koch, then a ninth-grader at Ashwaubenon High School near Green Bay, Wisc., was awake all night in a hotel bathroom in Oklahoma City, vomiting.
This was less-than-perfect timing to get the flu. Koch's two older brothers – Adam, a college senior and the Missouri Valley Conference player of the year, and Jake, a redshirt freshman – were forwards for one of the most surprising teams in college basketball, the Northern Iowa Panthers. UNI blasted into the NCAA Tournament with a 28-4 record as a No. 9 seed, and then upset No. 8 seed UNLV in its opening game. The next day, UNI was set to play the tournament's No. 1 overall seed, the Kansas Jayhawks of Sherron Collins, Xavier Henry and the Morris twins - Marcus and Markieff. That morning, weak from the flu, Bennett told his parents: "I don't think I can make it to the game."
They didn't force him one way or the other. Instead, they nudged.
"You sure you want to stay here at the hotel?" they asked. "You may never have another opportunity to see something like this."
Bennett loved basketball, like all three Koch boys did. Their father had played Division III ball at University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, where he'd met their mom. As the boys were growing up, their father had popped into old VHS tapes of his favorite player, Michael Jordan, and showed them tape of the greatest player of all time.
Adam Koch, the oldest child, had as a high school senior been deciding between West Virginia, Wichita State, Northern Iowa. After a few bumps in the road – namely, UNI pulling its scholarship offer when another player committed, then offering the scholarship once again when that player decommitted, then watching head coach Greg McDermott leave for the Iowa State job and assistant coach Ben Jacobson taking over – Adam had ended up at UNI. Jake did, too. And Bennett would go to Cedar Falls, Iowa to visit his brothers, play video games, shoot hoops and get a taste of the college life.
So he wanted to go to this NCAA Tournament game, the biggest game in his family's history, and the biggest game in UNI history.
So he forced himself to go to this game, flu be damned.
And as he walked up to the arena, with Jayhawk fans teasing him for his UNI gear – "You wasted your time coming here," one said – all that nausea disappeared, as if by a stroke of magic. He sat in the stands with his parents and younger sister. UNI jumped out to an eight-point lead within the first few minutes. At halftime, UNI was still up eight. That lead stretched to 11 on his oldest brother's layup with 10 minutes left in the game; Kansas hadn't led since its first basket of the game. An unheard-of upset suddenly seemed within reach. Then the lead dwindled. After a couple of Northern Iowa turnovers, Kansas was suddenly down only a point with 42 seconds left.
After a timeout, UNI inbounded the ball under its own hoop. Kansas' defense swarmed. In the stands, Bennett Koch stood and watched. His middle brother, freshman Jake, inbounded the ball to his older brother, senior Adam. Adam tossed it right back to Jake. Jake threw a bounce pass up the sidelines. A Kansas defender shot the gap, and the pass nearly got picked off. But UNI's Kwadzo Ahelegbe snagged the ball and gunned it past halfcourt, breaking the press. Ali Farokhmanesh took the pass just outside the 3-point line. He hesitated for just a moment – there was still 38 seconds left on the game clock, 30 seconds left on the shot clock – then let it fly. From the stands, Bennett Koch remembers thinking: What are you doing?
"Right when he let it go, the entire stadium was dead quiet," Bennett Koch said. "I don't think a single person was breathing. It was all just one big gasp. Then you could see it go through."
Eight years later, he paused for a moment as he relived this memory.
"Man – I'm getting excited even thinking about it right now," he said. "Then it went from the quietest arena I had ever been in to the loudest I'd ever been in. Right when it went through, the whole place erupted."
Seconds later, on the other end of the court, Jake Koch took a charge that all but sealed a 69-67 victory for Northern Iowa over Kansas in one of the most iconic first-weekend upsets in NCAA Tournament history.
"This almost never started," UNI coach Ben Jacobson said the other day.
When McDermott left Northern Iowa to take the Iowa State job and Jacobson was named the new coach in March 2006, Jacobson was immediately in a scramble. It had been a remarkable run under McDermott. A program that had only made one NCAA Tournament in its history had just come off a streak of three tournament bids in a row. And McDermott had just signed the best recruiting class in the school's history, which included Adam Koch.
That recruitment had been difficult to begin with. The night before he committed to a school, Adam thought he was going to commit to Wichita State. "The way my dad tells it," Bennett recalled, "is, my dad told Adam, 'I want you to go to bed and think about it, and if you change your mind, you change your mind. Because this is a big decision.' " He woke up and picked Northern Iowa instead. Later, an extra wrench was thrown in when the coach who recruited him took another job. Jacobson's first couple days on the job were spent calling and then visiting all four players in that recruiting class: Jordan Eglseder, Adam Koch, Kwadzo Ahelegbe and Kerwin Dunham. The question each of those players asked Jacobson was this: What are the other three doing?
When Eglseder said he was sticking with UNI, the other three followed suit. It was appropriate that the four commits cared so much about what the others were doing; when Jacobson took the job, he committed to building a program based on family. And that moment would, four years later, lead to the biggest game in UNI history. All four played in the game in Oklahoma City when UNI upset top-ranked Kansas.
Nearly 12 years after Adam Koch decided to stick with UNI, here is a remarkable fact: In 12 years as UNI's coach – a run that included the Kansas upset but also two Valley regular-season titles, four Valley conference tournament titles, and four NCAA tournament appearances – Jacobson has had 12 seasons of coaching Koch brothers .
"We fall into Adam, and that leads to Jake, and that leads to Bennett," Jacobson said. "It's wild."
Adam was a 1,000-point scorer at UNI. So was Jake. Bennett is a senior this season. Going into Friday's big home game (9 p.m. ET on CBS Sports Network) against ninth-ranked Xavier – the type of game that could again remind the nation that Northern Iowa has become one of the nation's top mid-major programs – Koch is leading UNI with 14.1 points per game and is well on his way to joining the 1,000-point club.
"This could have easily gone another direction," Jacobson said. "If we didn't get Adam, if that recruiting class breaks up, you never knows what follows. And you never know what would have happened over the next 12 years."
I'll take a stab at what would have happened: If Adam Koch didn't go to Northern Iowa, Jake Koch wouldn't have either. Nor would have Bennett Koch. Jake would not have inbounded the ball to Adam in that Kansas game, and Farokhmanesh would not have made that 3-pointer. And Ben Jacobson would not have such a coaching stellar resume – heck, who knows if he'd even still be coaching at UNI? – without this one decision 12 years ago by a teenage kid from outside Green Bay, Wisc.
Bennett Koch is a college senior now, and full of those wistful collegiate memories that college seniors tend to have. He remembers visiting his older brothers' house near campus, and how they always were sure to clean all the red solo cups off the pingpong table before their little brother came to town. He remembers staying up late to play Minecraft with his college roommates his freshman year. He remembers laughing at teammates who came from warm-weather states – like Texas native Isaiah Brown – when they experienced for the first time the winter winds from the plains blasted them. He remembers the giant pancakes at J's Homestyle Cooking in town, and the late summer nights playing sand volleyball with the women's volleyball team.
Koch contrubutions
A look at the careers of the Koch brothers at Northern Iowa.
Player | Years at UNI | Notable |
Adam Koch | 2006-10 | MVC POY in 2009-10, AP Honorable mention All-American |
Jake Koch | 2009-13 | No. 2 in games played at UNI with 138, blocked shots with 123 |
Bennett Koch | 2013-current | Leads team im scoring with 14.1 ppg and is 2nd in rebounding with 7.7 rpg |
Most of all, he remembers being a part of this continued run of basketball excellence. The highs included NCAA Tournament bids his freshman and sophomore year, and one NCAA Tournament win each season, including the absurd Paul Jesperson half-courter that downed Texas in 2016, and beating No. 1 North Carolina in 2015. He remembers his teammate Wes Washpun's buzzer-beater to win the 2016 Valley tournament. The lows included the next game in that 2016 tournament, when Northern Iowa was on the cusp of the Sweet 16 before an all-time collapse against Texas A&M. From the moment his oldest brother committed, through the Farokhmanesh shot and so many other crazy times, and to today, this family has had one wild ride in Cedar Falls.
The next and youngest member of the Koch clan is in high school now, and also is planning to attend college on an athletic scholarship. But she will not be playing for Ben Jacobson's basketball team. High school junior Maddie Koch has accepted a volleyball scholarship to play at Purdue University. The Koch family run at Northern Iowa will end after this season, a 12-year stretch that is the most remarkable in the school's history, and one of the most underrated mid-major achievements of the past decade.
And but for one middle-of-night change of heart that a high-school senior had when he changed his mind from Wichita State to Northern Iowa, it may never have happened.
"I had already grown up so familiar with the campus, so familiar with the coaching staff, just knew this family environment," Bennett Koch said. "I developed such a great relationship with them. They recruited me, obviously, but in my head, I've always been around them. To think about going anywhere else just felt weird. And to be leaving here soon – well, that feels weird too."
