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EspañolA couple of seasons ago, meeting Northwest Missouri State University in a men's MIAA basketball tournament would have meant facing one of the best teams in the conference or even the entire country.
But that was when Ben McCollum was head coach of the Bearcats. Since his departure to the Division I level to coach at Drake University and now at the University of Iowa, Northwest Missouri State has struggled.
That's who Missouri Southern State University is tasked with taking down in the MIAA Tournament on Wednesday inside the Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City as the Lions and Bearcats will battle to keep dancing this season — for at least one more day.
"We feel good. We like our seed and the opportunity in front of us," MSSU head coach Sam McMahon said.
Southern is coming off a close loss to No. 3 Washburn. It fought a close game and led during the second half before allowing a late run that ended in a 10-point loss.
"We continued to fight. It was a tough environment against one of the best teams in the country. We gave them our best fight," McMahon said. "I thought it was a mature game. I really liked the shooting percentage we had against that defense.
"But it's still a loss, and we have to use that as fuel."
MSSU (16-12, 10-9 MIAA) has a losing skid of four games earlier this season. That occurred back in late December and early January. It dropped the last two games before Christmas break and the first two after Christmas break.
Since then, the longest skid is two in a row, which is what the team is at now.
And the last time these teams met, Northwest Missouri State (15-15, 8-11 MIAA) won 81-74 in Joplin less than a month ago.
"They controlled the game last time we played. We have to be hungry. The hungriest team wins in March," McMahon said.
He noted that his team didn't defend well in that meeting. In fact, he said that when the team loses it's "most likely" because the team didn't defend "like we can."
McMahon wants to see his team defend for an entire game Wednesday and for the rest of the season.
The Lions surrendered 58% (32 for 55) shooting from the field in the last contest with the Bearcats and 42% (10 for 24) from 3-point range.
There have been various starting lineup combinations for Southern this year. During that game, Colin Ruffin, Isaiah Atwater, Hunter Fitch, Brayden Williams and Gavyn Elkamil started.
The most recent combination was Atwater, Elkamil, Jaden Taylor, Tyrone Wright Jr. and Ruffin. McMahon says to expect that same group. Taylor and Wright had spent some time coming off the bench after the midway point of the season.
"Those guys have had good practices, and they're seniors. We want to send them off the right way. They want to win this tournament, and we look for them to lead us," McMahon said.
He was specifically speaking about Elkamil, Taylor and Wright when talking about the seniors. The other seniors on the team are Prince Agbaeze and Tane Kirisome.