Bearcats try to move past loss
DAILY FORUM FILE PHOTO
Northwest Missouri State University’s Justin Pitts, center, drives to the basket for a layup against Emporia Sate on Feb. 8. Pitts scored 16 points in the win.
The Northwest Missouri State University men’s basketball team lost its first game of the season on Saturday.
While some of the players are still feeling the sting, the mood isn’t completely negative — far from it in fact.
“It’s going to sit with us for awhile,” Northwest senior Zach Schneider said during Tuesday’s media luncheon. “Just seeing how they celebrated on their home court like they won a lot more than they did, but it’s going to stick with us. The mood of the team is great. We had a really intense practice on Monday and we’re going to get after it again today. It kind of refreshed us and kind of took a little bit of pressure off the team.”
The Bearcats learned later in the day they fell from No. 1 in Division II to No. 3 with a single loss. Fairmont State moved up to No. 1.
Bearcat coach Ben McCollum said his team didn’t start Saturday’s game against Missouri Southern as well as it needed to and it played a big part in the loss.
“Coming out against Pittsburg State, things came really easy really early, so we expected the same against Southern,” he said. “The first time we played them, they pressured us like they do most teams.
“This time, they decided it was time to not pressure anymore. Generally teams change what they are doing for us. They did and they did a good job, but it wasn’t anything we haven’t seen before. We just didn’t execute as well as we needed to against that scheme.”
Northwest is heading into its final two games of the regular season with Lindenwood coming to town tonight at 7:30 p.m. and Lincoln heading to Bearcat Arena on Saturday at 3:30 p.m.
The Bearcats beat Lincoln 80-75 and Lindenwood 89-64 in their road contests.
Anthony Virdure scored 50 points against the Bearcats in the first meeting, but no other Lincoln player scored in double digits. The Blue Tigers are 1-2 since the last meeting with Northwest and are coming off a 70-63 overtime win over Central Missouri.
Lincoln will play Missouri Western on Thursday before traveling North to Maryville.
Lindenwood hasn’t lost since they fell 89-64 to Northwest, with two of the wins coming against Lincoln.
No matter how this season ends, Northwest will go down as having won 24 straight games and 28 conference games in a row. It’s 31 conference games in a row if one counts the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletic Association Tournament games last season.
The Bearcats haven’t lost a game at home since Jan. 10, 2015 against Washburn — that’s good for 32 straight home wins.
With all that in mind, McCollum said the team has a lot to be proud of.
“Now you have an opportunity to celebrate that and move on to future goals,” he said. “You start to take that stuff for granted, especially during the season. Hopefully, we can look back and understand the kind of streak that we’ve had. Our first two years, we didn’t make the conference tournament, then we win the next five out of six conference championships. It just speaks to what type of kids we have in our program.”
