By Jim Henry

jhenry@joplinglobe.com

When Missouri Southern closes its football season Saturday afternoon against Northwest Missouri State, the Bearcats’ starting lineup has players who current Lions head coach Bart Tatum recruited to Maryville.

“I still have great relationships with those people,” Tatum said Wednesday afternoon. “Kendall Wright (wide receiver), LaRon Council (running back), Tyler Northway (defensive end), I could keep rattling off names of guys that I recruited in their starting unit.

“I’m really happy they’re having good careers. Nothing that I would wish bad on them, I just hope they don’t have a great day Saturday.”

Lions defensive back Skyler Vandiver, who prepped in Maryville, also knows many of the Bearcats.

“It’s just another game, but there are a couple of guys out there who I’ve bumped some heads with and some guys I played with in high school that it will be nice to see them,” he said. “I get to see them at Christmas, but I don’t get to talk to them a whole lot.”

Vandiver, an all-conference player in high school, received some recruiting attention from the Bearcats.

“It was a walk-on deal,” he said. “I ended up going to an NAIA school, Benedictine. Then when I found out Coach Tatum was head coach down here, I got a hold of him and came down here, and I’ve loved it ever since. It’s a great place.”

No. 3-ranked Northwest Missouri (9-1) has won nine straight since a season-opening 44-27 loss at home to No. 2 Abilene Christian. The Bearcats are seeking their third consecutive unblemished MIAA championship and a first-round bye in the NCAA Division II playoffs.

The Lions (4-6) have lost their last three games, and they have lost four home league games since beginning the year with victories over Harding 45-31 and Haskell 66-9.

“I clearly felt (the program was better than 2007) at the beginning of the year, and the production showed it,” Tatum said. “Production recently hasn’t, and that’s a huge concern. We have to identify exactly what’s gone wrong, how we can improve. .. I don’t care about injuries. I don’t care about any excuses we can make. All we care about is figuring how to right the ship and become productive again.”

Tatum came to MSSU three years ago after spending 12 years as an assistant under Mel Tjeerdsma with the Bearcats. Tatum sees similarities in the formative years of building a program at the two schools.

“Our first three years at Northwest Missouri State (1994-96), we won 16 ball games,” Tatum said. “If we win Saturday, we will have won 16 ball games after three years. Now the third year at Northwest (11-2) was a lot better third year than we’re having right now, but the program I took over, in eight years, they had no winning records prior to our coaching staff coming here, zero winning records ... and had won 27 games in eight years. When we took over at Northwest, they had (one) winning season in (the previous) eight years and won (33) games.

“And the landscape of our conference now is dramatically different. In 1994, ’95, ’96, there was one legitimate top-20 team consistently in this league. Now there are five or six. So our hill is a little steeper to climb here, but everybody still has their hiking boots on and we’re still climbing. Nobody has quit, and we’re not going to quit.”

Before becoming a coach, Tatum was an all-conference running back for Tjeerdsma at Austin College in Sherman, Texas.

“We don’t talk near as much as we used to, but every couple of weeks or so, we’re going to have a conversation,” Tatum said. “They are always very good, very pleasant. It’s a family-type situation with us. We go way back, all the way to the 1980s. You just don’t walk away from relationships like that, and I never will.”

The two head coaches usually talk anything but football.

“We never talk football, very rarely,” Tatum said. “We talk about Rachel (Tatum, Bart’s wife), Alec, Miles, Matthew (Tatum, their children), Carol (Tjeerdsma, Mel’s wife), his daughters, grandkids. That’s what we talk about.”