By Jim Henry

jhenry@joplinglobe.com

For two hours today, the fan base for Southwest Baptist’s women’s basketball team will grow immensely.

The Bearcats play Northwest Missouri State today at 1 p.m. in the MIAA Basketball Championships in Kansas City, Mo., and the winner receives the league’s automatic berth in the NCAA Tournament.

Southwest Baptist is fifth in the South Central Regional and — win or lose today — will be part of next weekend’s eight-team regional, most likely at West Texas A&M.

“We’re all cheering them on,” Missouri Southern head coach Maryann Mitts said.

That’s because the Lions are sixth in the region, and an SBU victory probably leaves the Lions in the regional as the fourth MIAA school along with SBU, Washburn and Emporia State.

But Northwest Missouri, a 59-56 winner over top-seeded Washburn in Saturday’s semifinals, could put the Lions’ regional hopes in jeopardy by beating SBU. The two teams of Bearcats split their regular-season games, each winning at home — Northwest 101-97 and SBU 85-80.

“It would come down to whether the St. Mary’s (Texas) record (25-4) overshadows our strength of schedule, I think,” Mitts said.”

The region consists of three conferences — MIAA, Lone Star and Heartland. St. Mary’s won the Heartland Conference postseason tournament Saturday afternoon with a 43-37 victory over St. Edward’s, but this year the Heartland doesn’t have an automatic NCAA bid.

The Lone Star tournament has gone fine as far as the Lions are concerned. West Texas A&M and Central Oklahoma, ranked first and third in the region, won semifinal games on Saturday. Angelo State, which lost to West Texas A&M in the semis, is 23-8 and eighth in the region, so it joins the Lions and St. Mary’s as bubble teams.

If Northwest Missouri wins today, would the selection committee take five MIAA teams?

“I can’t remember when we had five MIAA teams,” Mitts said. “If they are counting the number of teams in the conference, I think St. Mary’s gets the nod. If they go by the numbers, I think we get the nod. They have a tough decision on their hands.”

The decision will be announced at 9:30 tonight Daylight Savings Time on the NCAA Division II Selection show. The show will be shown on the internet at www.cstv.com/ncaa/divii.

Missouri Southern has scheduled a gathering in Webster Hall in rooms 111 and 114 for its fans to watch the show.