By David Boyce

EDMOND, Okla. – As the defending regular-season conference champions and tournament champions, Northwest Missouri State was going to get Central Oklahoma’s best shot in the MIAA opener at Hamilton Field House.

The Bronchos created a few turnovers with their hustle. They made baskets. But the Bronchos didn’t have enough juice to handle the methodical, smart play of Northwest.

By midway through the second half, the Bearcats used their poise on offense and increased their intensity on defense to come away with a 73-66 victory Wednesday evening at Central Oklahoma.

“What we need to understand is every single time we step on the floor and wearing that jersey, other teams are going to play their best game,” Northwest coach Ben McCollum said. “If we are not up to 100 percent and playing at 80, there are talented players in this league that can beat you.

“Central Oklahoma is a very good basketball team. I think they are going to win a lot of games if they play the way they did tonight. We need to make sure we are ready from now on.”

Northwest, ranked No. 3 in the NABC top 25, improved to 7-0 overall and 1-0 in the MIAA. The Bearcats will get six days off before returning to Bearcat Arena 7:30 p.m. Tuesday against rival Missouri Western.

“We have to do a better job of respecting our opponent no matter who it is,” said junior Chris-Ebou Ndow, who finished with 13 points and 11 rebounds. “In the second half, we really did that. We got on ourselves. We knew what we needed to do.

“We know we are ranked No. 3. We know everybody is going to have their best game against us. We know that. Tonight, we really got a taste of it so we know we got to come ready.”

Five minutes into the second half, Northwest took the lead for good on a three-pointer by Zach Schneider that gave the Bearcats a 44-41 lead.

The Bronchos tied the game at 44-44 and then Justin Pitts showed why he is one of the best point guards in Division II. He made a three-pointer and after a basket by the Bronchos, Pitts made a two-point field goal followed by a three-pointer, pushing Northwest’s lead to 52-46.

“My teammates gave me the confidence,” said Pitts, who finished with a game-high 28 points. “They trust me to make those shots. Coming out of a timeout, Chris said, ‘take over. This is your game. We need you to win this.’ That is what I started to do. I focused more and the shots started to fall through.”

Northwest increased its lead to 59-50 with 7:32 left and moved it to 62-52 with 6 minutes left. With under three minutes left, Northwest held a 70-59 lead. From that point on, the Bearcats only needed to take care of the basketball and hit free throws.

“It starts on the defensive end,” Ndow said. “In the first half, we didn’t get stops. We let them get a lot of O-boards. We just didn’t come out ready to play.”

In the first half, Northwest never found its rhythm on defense and went into halftime behind 32-29.

“They executed better than us,” McCollum said. “I thought they got to 50/50 balls better than us.”

Although the Bearcats struggled behind the three-point arc, making two of eight attempts, they shot the ball well overall, connecting for 54.2 percent in the first half.

“We have shot makers and our execution is great,” Ndow said. “We don’t have any selfish players. We know our roles.”

But throughout the first half, Northwest had trouble putting together consecutive stops. Because of that, the lead changed many times. In the first six minutes, there were nine lead changes.

When Central Oklahoma went ahead 11-10, the Bronchos were finally able to keep the lead for more than one minute.

Northwest eventually regained the lead at 16-15 on a basket by D’Vante Mosby, who finished with 10 points and is four points shy of reaching 1,000 career collegiate points.

The Bronchos went right back in front. Northwest took its final lead of the first half at 20-19 on a three-pointer by Schneider.

Central Oklahoma regained the lead at 23-22 and then extended it to 30-24 on back-to-back field goals by Josh Holliday.

“Everything was kind of negative the first half and the second half I thought we turned it into some positives and were able to respond and that was huge,” McCollum said.

— Northwest Athletics —