The Northwest Missouri State Men hung on for a 52-51 win over Emporia State and inched closed to a tie with Central. Central lost to Lindenwood 83-82 as the Lions hit two free throws with five seconds left to get the win. The Bearcats are now 8-3 in the conference, half a game behind Central, who is now 9-3. The Lions are right behind at 8-4, right where Bearcat coach Ben McCollum predicted they would be early in the year. The Lion students stormed the court afterwards in the biggest victory in school history. The win puts Northwest right back in the thick of the MIAA title race despite playing another game without Dillon Starzl.
It looked like an easy game for the Bearcats as they slowly built up an 18-6 lead over Emporia. The Hornets were playing a zone, which Northwest has had trouble with for much of the year. Northwest was much better at sticking to the game plan, getting it to the middle of the floor or the short corner and then either finishing at the rim or getting it to the open person. But playing against the Hornets is like pulling teeth at the dentist's; the Hornets did not panic in the face of their deficit, but ran their slow, deliberate offense and forced Northwest to play defense for 30 seconds every time down the court. And the Hornets matched up well with Northwest's posts with 6'10" post player Paul Bunch, who Emporia was lobbing the ball to for some easy looks. They had one play where they would isolate their other post, Gavin Brown, against one of Northwest's smaller players and occupy the defense, opening looks for Bunch.
Northwest led 26-15 as late as the first half, but then once again, the halftime momentum thing worked in Emporia's favor. Northwest gave up an easy bucket and then a jumped pass and dunk allowed the Hornets to cut it to 26-19 at the break.
For one of the few times in the game, Emporia rushed the ball up the floor at the start of the second half and got some easy transition looks to catch Northwest and move into the lead at 35-32. Northwest was continuing to run their offense well and getting good looks, but they were not going in. The challenge for Northwest was to play through that and find a way to keep their heads. Finally, the Bearcats started getting the ball in the high post to post players Kyle Schlake or Grant Cozad and then dropped it off to Bryston Williams backdoor; he got several good looks that way for either layups or kickouts to open people as Northwest slowly regained control. DeAngelo Hailey's 3-pointer off a Williams kickout tied it at 39 and then following some layups from Williams, Alex Sullivan hit his only points of the night to put Northwest up 48-43 with 4:21 left.
Emporia then went to a hard press to try and get the ball back. It initially backfired as Grant Cozad got behind the defense before they could get set up and gave Northwest a 52-46 lead with 2:19 left, but the Bearcats went cold the last 2:19 of the game. Cozad got blocked underneath and Hailey dribbled out of bounds as Emporia chipped back to within one with a Brown 3-pointer with 36.9 seconds left. Northwest threw the ball away and gave Emporia the ball back on a miscommunication with 28.7 seconds left and Brown got a good look after some good ball movement by Emporia, but it missed. Hailey missed the front end of a one and one and Kaleb Wright rushed the ball up the court for Emporia. But Northwest guarded him well and his 3-pointer that would have won it was well off the mark.
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