By MATT PIKE
After an early bye week last week, the Northwest Missouri State Bearcat football team is preparing for its first home matchup of the season opening MIAA Conference play.
It's coming off a unique situation as well. The Bearcats will welcome the Washburn Ichabod's to Bearcat Stadium, a team coming off a game against Colorado School of Mines that ended due to heat conditions in a 16-16 tie, It was Washburn's first tie game since 1977 in a game at Missouri Western when the two were in the NAIA Conference.
Northwest head coach John McMenamin says this will be the first time in his career he's had to play a team coming off a tie.
"In fact, Matt Keeley, our basketball coach, was saying the last tie in Washburn's history his dad on the team and played to a tie, so it was a fun fact," McMenamin says. "But it doesn't matter win or loss, you kind of look at the talent level and what they're doing, and unfortunately they're better than they were last year and coach (Zach) Watkin is doing a good job with them and they're building it the right way."
Prior to the Bearcats bye week, Northwest opened the season with a 48-3 win at Texas A&M Kingsville. Despite the dominant win, McMenamin still saw things that needed improvement, which the Bearcats worked on through the bye week.
"We spent a lot of time on redzone, for us I thought the defense did really godo in game one in redzone defense, and that was the area that from the previous year to this year that i thought we could improve the most in," McMenamin explains. "So offensively, we only scored touchdowns on five of eight chances, and that's got to get up to that 80% range in our opinion, so we spent a lot of time on situational football of how to work the game and how to grow cerebrally as much as we could, and really on redzone on both sides of the ball."
Northwest beat Washburn 34-7 on the road last season, a bounce back game from their 2025 season opener against Minnesota State in which they fell on rhe road 38-14. This year's Ichabod's team, however, brings a different look from last season, starting with Logan Madden at quarterback. Madden did not play against Northwest last season, playing his first game of the season the following week against Colorado School of Mines.
Defensive back Holden Zigmant says Washburn brings a challenge this season defensively with an efficient offense.
"Their quarterback gets the ball off well and on time, the run games improved as well, and they've got some athletes at receiver, so I would say they're balanced in that sense," Zigmant says. "So, they're offense knows how to get open, get the defense in their weak spots, so I think us just being smart football players on the fly, they threw some new stuff in last week so we're guessing they'll throw some new stuff in this week, so just being ready to adjust to that."
It's the first home matchup of the season for Northwest. The Bearcats opened the season last year with two consecutive road trips, but this season will be home two weeks in a row in MIAA play. Kickoff against Washburn tomorrow is at 1:35pm.
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