Northwest men’s basketball secures 10th consecutive MIAA regular season title in rematch with Central Oklahoma | Sports

Northwest Athletics’ staff doctor emeritus Patrick Harr walks into the west stairwell inside Bearcat Arena main right down to the locker room for Northwest males’s basketball. As he strikes towards the steps, his gaze matches junior ahead Wes Dreamer’s, who’s standing alongside the wall.

“Holy moly,” Harr stated, as “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey performs in the sector behind him.

“Pretty good one, wasn’t it?” Dreamer stated again to Harr, adopted by a smooth chuckle.

Harr’s assertion didn’t come from something in the stairwell and even Dreamer. Instead, it was a product of the 65-51 win No. 2 Northwest secured over No. 7 Central Oklahoma moments earlier than, Feb. 23.

The 14-point triumph for the Bearcats (26-2, 19-2 MIAA) wasn’t simply their twelfth win in a row, it wasn’t simply the primary house recreation since Feb. 4 and it wasn’t simply their first victory over the Bronchos (23-4, 17-4 MIAA) since March 5, 2021.

Northwest’s win in the penultimate recreation of the regular season secured this system’s 10th consecutive MIAA regular season title and its twenty third general.

“It never gets old,” Dreamer stated with a smile. “The feeling never gets old. It’s great. … It’s one of the best feelings in the world. We fight each other everyday in practice, we go hard with each other. I mean, the 4 a.m. workouts — that’s when you see them pay off.”

The cause for the Bearcats’ win could possibly be the 10-0 run in the final 3:15 of play, senior guard Diego Bernard’s violent one-hand jam with 1:11 left or Dreamer’s 4 second-half 3-pointers.

For 14th-year coach Ben McCollum, one among, if not the most important, components was the Northwest devoted among the many 2,200 in attendance — over 600 extra followers than Northwest usually sees per house recreation.

“It was awesome,” McCollum stated. “I mean, the football guys really helped a lot — I thought they were fantastic. … This is as good of an environment as there is in college basketball. It’s awesome when it gets packed like that.”

Even with the No. 2 scoring protection (56 factors per recreation) in Division II in Northwest incomes its twelfth consecutive recreation of holding its foes below 60 factors, it wasn’t all the time easy crusing for the brand new No. 1 seed in the MIAA Tournament March 1-5.

From 2:42 left in the primary half till 16:37 remaining in the second, the Bearcats didn’t rating as soon as. The almost six-minute drought was ended by Dreamer’s first 3-pointer of the half and his second of the sport.

Even as the 2 top-10 groups had been locked in a back-and-forth battle, McCollum stated it was the preseason that helped give the Bearcats benefit in the later levels of the competition.

“Just conditioning, the toughness that we operate with, the habits that we built — it all comes back to those kinds of things, and that’s what we try to preach to our guys,” McCollum stated.

The Thursday evening recreation ended with the everyday “cutting of the net,” however two Northwest gamers skilled it for the fifth time — Bernard and junior ahead Luke Waters.

Bernard and Waters have been with the inexperienced and white since fall 2018. They’ve helped the staff to a Division II-record three-straight nationwide championships, three MIAA Tournament titles and so they’ve by no means ended a season with no convention regular season title.

“Man, it’s so special,” Waters stated. “I look back on every single year — every single year taken every team’s best shot every game while playing in, my opinion, the strongest conference in all of Division II — and to be able to come out on top of the regular season every single year that I’ve been here — for the last five years and then the last 10 years overall — it’s special.”

“Just all the work that we put in before the season starts in the preseason — coming in for seven-eight weeks of hell that nobody sees — and just coming in, day in and day out, when you don’t want to come in and you’re sore, just gotta push through it,” Bernard stated. “What makes it so special is it’s my last year, and to get one more just feels so good.”