Both football coaches in this Division II quarterfinal football game feel there teams have enough to improve on from the November 6th meeting in Warrensburg when Northwest won on a 45 yard field goal as time expired in a 17-16 win for the defending national champion Bearcats.
Central Missouri enters this game with two losses. One, at the beginning of the season against Division I FCS Illinois State and the other, their last regular season game against NWMS.
The Bearcats lost their first game of the year against Texas A & M Kingsville. A team they beat in the second round by scoring a touchdown with :17 left for a 35-31 win. Interview with Northwest Missouri State’s Mel Tjeerdsma
Five of the last six wins for the Bearcats have been by a combined total of 14 points, but Coach Tjeerdsma isn’t too concerned about that. He’s actually been impressed with the poise and confidence of his teams who have managed to keep fighting and coming back in games when it looks like they have no business being in them after the first half.
Central Missouri’s Jim Svoboda says his players were hoping they’d get another crack at the Bearcats. Since that regular season ending loss, the Mules have dominated two Texas school (West Texas A & M and Abilene Christian) by scoring 55 points in each game. The 16 points the Mules scored against NWMS was the first and only game in which they scored fewer than 30 points.
The NCAA announced Wednesday that Saturday’s NCAA-II Quarterfinal Football Playoff contest between the No. 8 Central Missouri Mules and the No. 3 Northwest Missouri State Bearcats will be televised live by Metro Sports at 1:05 p.m. UCM’s KMOS-TV, Missouri PBS will pick up the feed as well.
The game can be found on Time Warner Cable channels 30 and 1030, and on Comcast channel 258 in the Kansas City area. It can also be seen in Lawrence, Kan., on Sunflower Broadband channel 37.
KMOS will broadcast the game into an additional 800,000 households throughout the state of Missouri, including the cities of Warrensburg, Sedalia, Columbia, Jefferson City, Rolla, Moberly, Macon, and Tipton.
For those who do not have any of the above listed providers, the game will be web-streamed live on NCAA.com.
