Bearcats head back to NCAA Tournament
JASON LAWRENCE/DAILY FORUM
Northwest redshirt-freshman point guard Justin Pitts hits the layup as he falls away during the second half of the Bearcats’ 65-58 loss to Pittsburg State Saturday in the MIAA Tournament semifinals at Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City.
For the second time in as many years and third time in six seasons under head coach Ben McCollum, the Northwest men’s basketball team is returning to the NCAA Tournament.
The Bearcats (23-6) won the MIAA regular season title outright for the first time since the 1986-87 season and were awarded with the No. 4 seed in the Central Region during Sunday night’s selection show.
“It’s like the conference tournament, you don’t really look at the number in front of the name,” senior guard Matt Wallace said, “but getting back there is really exciting, especially senior year. I think we’re ready to get out there.”
Northwest advanced to the NCAA Tournament for consecutive years for the first time since the Bearcats went to three straight NCAA Tournaments following the 2005-06, 2006-07 and 2007-08 seasons and it marks their 15th overall appearance in the national tournament.
Last year, Northwest advanced to the Sweet 16 as the No. 5 seed before losing to eventual national champion, Central Missouri, in the regional final. That experience is something the Bearcats expect to help them as they prepare for another March run.
“I think it gives us confidence that we can win and the expectation of being able to win in the national tournament is there,” McCollum said. “I think our kids expect to win and to perform well, and hopefully that happens.”
The Bearcats are one of three MIAA squads to make the field of 64, along with Central Missouri (24-6), which drew the No. 3 seed, and MIAA Tournament champion Pittsburg State (20-11), the No. 7 seed. Four teams from the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference also made the regional field.
“The MIAA is a tough conference, and it showed last year with four teams making it up there in Mankato and it showed this year with three,” Northwest senior forward Grant Cozad said. “Night-in and night-out, you don’t know who’s going to beat who. The team at the bottom of the conference can come out and beat the team at the top. That’s how the MIAA is. … I think the MIAA is one of the premier conferences and I think we show that year after year with all the teams that make the national tournament.”
Northwest, which was ranked No. 25 in the latest Division II coaches poll, advanced to the MIAA Tournament semifinals Saturday at Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City, falling to eventual tournament champion Pitt State, 65-58, which should provide a bit of extra motivation for a team that had won 10 straight prior to the setback.
“We kind of went on a sour note with this last loss,” Cozad said. “We’ve got another chance. It’s a new season. We’re going to try and make the best of it.
“We had that little rough patch mid-season this year. We had those two losses to Washburn and Central. We bounced back and put a nice little streak of wins together and we just came out hungrier than ever. I think we’re going to treat it just like that, come out and scratch and claw, play with a chip on our shoulder and play as best we can.”
Northwest opens play at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 14 against fifth-seeded Minnesota State-Mankato (24-7) at the Sanford Pentagon in Sioux Falls, South Dakota where top-seed and host Augustana (30-2) is located.
“I’m glad that we get to play an NSIC team and kind of avoid the MIAA until the championship,” McCollum said. “We’ve got outside opponents and that will be nice. Everybody at this point is good, so it really doesn’t matter who you play.”
This will mark the fourth time in the past two seasons, the Bearcats and Mavericks have squared off. Northwest beat Mankato 71-66 last year in the regional semifinals in Mankato, Minnesota and have also scrimmaged against the Mavericks prior to both this season and last.
“They’re a great team,” Cozad said. “We played them last year in the preseason, scrimmaged them, got a little taste for what they do. Then we saw them in the semis. Then we did the same thing this year, scrimmaged them. We saw the same guys basically … we’re going to play them four time in the last two years, so that’ll help us out a lot. We know what it takes, we know what we have to do.”
Top-seeded Augustana — the NSIC regular season and tournament champion — will face No. 8 seed Arkansas Tech (18-13) — the lone qualifier from the Great American Conference — at 5:30 p.m. Saturday and the winner of that contest will face the Bearcats-Mavericks victor at 7:30 p.m. Sunday in the regional semifinals.
On the other side of the bracket, No. 2 seed Minnesota State-Moorhead (32-3) — which beat Northwest 75-66 in the season-opener back on Nov. 14 — takes on Pittsburg State at 2:30 p.m. Saturday and Central Missouri faces sixth-seeded Northern State (23-8) at noon. Tickets go on sale at 9 a.m. Tuesday and will be $12 for adults, $5 for students and children age 5 and under are free.
“With our outing last year, I think we’ll have the same thing this year — teams don’t know what to expect when the MIAA comes to play,” Wallace said. “We just play a little bit different than everybody else.”
The regional title game will be played at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 17. The National Championship Elite Eight will be held in Evansville, Indiana beginning Wednesday, March 25th at the Ford Center.
“We’ve got higher goals and I think we can accomplish some higher goals,” McCollum said. “This first game will be probably our toughest. I really think that Mankato might be the best out of that league (NSIC) even though they’re the fifth seed. We’ll just have to be ready to play.”
