NW Missouri St. adds Div. II basketball title months after football crown

Northwest Missouri State has become the first Division II school to win the men's basketball and football championships in the same season, doing so with a 71-61 victory over Fairmont State on Saturday in Sioux Falls, S.D.

Northwest Missouri State finished 35-1 this season. The Bearcats held off Lincoln Memorial (Tenn.) in the semifinals on Thursday.

The Northwest Missouri State football team defeated North Alabama 29-3 in December to win the Division II title. 

Florida pulled off the football-men's hoops double in 2006-07.

Oklahoma State also can lay claim to winning two titles in the same year. The Cowboys won the NCAA tournament in 1945-46, and in October they were retroactively named the 1945 national champions by the American Football Coaches Association.

In Saturday's game, Justin Pitts scored 23 points and Chris-Ebou Ndow finished with 17 points and 18 rebounds to lead the Bearcats. 

Pitts hit a 3-pointer to open the game, a layup by Woods made it 13-3 lead about 5-plus minutes in and Northwest Missouri State took a 32-21 lead into the break. Another 3 by Pitts gave the Bearcats their biggest lead, 36-22, with 18 minutes to go and Fairmont State (34-3) trailed by at least eight the rest of the way.

A layup by Shammgod Wells cut Fairmont's deficit to 60-52 with 4:54 left, but Ndow answered with a layup eight seconds later and the Falcons missed their next eight shots, and two free throws by Ndow made it 68-54 with 1:12 remaining.

Fairmont, which came in averaging 95.4 points per game, shot just 31 percent (9 of 29) from the field in the first half. The Falcons set season lows for points in a half (21 in the first) and total points.

Both teams were appearing in their first D-II national championship game and each set school records for wins in a season.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.