In a national tournament run full of milestones, the Fairmont State men's basketball team will vie Saturday for the greatest milestone of all.
The Falcons will face Northwest Missouri State at 3 p.m. Saturday for the NCAA Division II national title in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The game will be broadcast on CBS. It is Fairmont State's first Division II national championship game appearance in program history.
That first came after another first - FSU's 79-68 win over Bellarmine in the Falcons' first Division II national semifinal. This is the sixth time in team history that Fairmont State (34-2) has reached at least a national quarterfinal round. As members of the NAIA, the Falcons reached the 1975 national quarterfinals, the 1965 and 1971 national semifinals and were the 1968 national runners up. As members of Division II, the Falcons reached the 1998 national quarterfinals.
Fairmont's 34 wins are a single-season program record, and the Falcons have been rolling since their last loss, a 67-65 setback to West Liberty in the Mountain East Conference tournament title game. Since then, their average margin of victory has been 15.4 points, and their winning margin has hit single digits just once in those last five games, an 86-80 win over Wheeling Jesuit in the Atlantic Region championship.
The Falcons are led by MEC Player of the Year Matt Bingaya. The former Southern Mississippi transfer averages 18.8 points and 7.1 rebounds and gets a boost from Thomas Wimbush, who averages 15.9 points and 6.6 rebounds, and D'Ondre Stockman, a 44-percent 3-point shooter who make 5 of 6 from beyond the arc against Bellarmine.
The Bearcats (34-1) sport both the National Association of Basketball Coaches Coach of the Year, Ben McCollumn, and Player of the Year, Justin Pitts. This season is NMSU's sixth straight with at least 20 wins, one of just seven Division II schools to accomplish that feat. Pitts also was named the Basketball Times Player of the Year. He broke his own program single-season scoring record with 731 points this season and owns the team's single-season record with 180 assists. NMSU hasn't lost a game since Feb. 18, an 88-71 setback to Missouri Southern State.