Northwest Missouri State University’s football team will play in their 10th Division II championship game this weekend.

The Bearcats are undefeated this season, coming into Saturday’s game as defending national champions and having won 29 straight games. The Bearcats will take on the University of North Alabama in Kansas City. North Alabama’s only loss this season was their first game against Jacksonville State.

John Coffey is the Sports and News Director at KXCV/KRNW Radio in Maryville and the Voice of the Bearcats. He said he thinks he’s done play-by-play for most, if not all of the Bearcat’s championship games through the years.   

“I think the main thing that really stood out to me for this season is just how dominating they’ve been through virtually every game, they’ve very rarely been challenged, even in some games where I thought they would receive a challenge,” Coffey said. “They’ve gone through this season relatively unscathed. The one thing that was the toughest was from last week’s game in the semifinals with Ferris State, really for the first time, a number of injuries in one game hit them and we’ll just have to see how that will affect play on Saturday and who’s able to come back from those injuries.”

Coffey said at the beginning of the season he thought this team had a good chance of making it back to the championship game.

“Going into the season I felt like this was a team that had a chance if they could stay healthy they could make it back there,” Coffey said. “They had pretty much all the key players back from last year and there’s a little bit more depth than what they had a year ago so I really felt going in that they were going to be very strong. Defensively, they’re probably as strong as I’ve ever seen them and offensively it’s been a team that really from the first game was hitting on all cylinders which is something they didn’t do a year ago. This year, from day one they’ve been focused in and playing very well and I really felt like they were probably the favorite to make it back to the championship game from the very start this year.”

Coffey said the forecast for Saturday is, “Cold, cold cold and I think a chance of some snow and maybe some sleet or light rain at some point, so it’s going to be a cold one.”

Coffey said he’s not looking forward to the cold but he’s looking forward to Saturday’s matchup.

“It’s been a fun season where they’ve accomplished pretty much every goal they set up to the championship game, we’ll see how that turns out.”

The game kicks off at 3 p.m. on Saturday at Children’s Mercy Park in Kansas City.  When we contacted Northwest Friday night they said they still planned on having the game even with the winter weather conditions.