By TOMMY REZAC
St. Joseph Post
The Northwest Missouri State men’s basketball team (33-5) will play for its third straight national title and its fourth in five years Saturday as the Bearcats get set to face Augusta for the Division II men’s basketball national championship at the Ford Center in Evansville, Indiana.
Tip-off is set for 2 p.m. and the game will be televised nationally on CBS. The Bearcats are back in the title game after a 70-57 win over Black Hills State in Thursday’s Final Four game.
Northwest is 33-5 - the most losses they’ve taken in six years and they also lost back-to-back games in the regular season this year for the first time since 2015. Northwest head coach Ben McCollum says despite some doubts, he felt like this group was capable of doing something special.
"I don't think anything was ever wrong with us," McCollum said after Thursday's game. "I've said it before, we're not the 2021 Bearcats. There's a whole new story, and there's only one of us. It's our story and we're writing it and it's a special story."
Sophomore Luke Waters, who scored a team-high 17 points on Thursday, says getting back to this point speaks volumes to the work ethic and tradition of their program.
"It's amazing," Waters remarked. "It speaks to Mac (McCollum), it speaks to this group and our resiliency. We were challenged this year. It hasn't been easy one bit. The fact that we have the opportunity to compete for a national championship and a title game, it speaks to our team and our program honestly."
Northwest faces an Augusta team that’s 33-3 overall and winners of 19 straight games. This will mark the first ever meeting between the two programs.
Northwest has won 16 straight NCAA tournament games going in, meaning Diego Bernard and Trevor Hudgins have never lost in the NCAA tournament in their college careers.
Northwest will try and be the first men's basketball program in DII history to win three straight national titles.
You can follow Tommy on Twitter @TommyKFEQ and St. Joseph Post @StJosephPost.