The final day of the MIAA tournament left nine schools green with envy.

Now the Northwest Bearcats can party like it’s 2004.

Apparently, titles come in twos.

Sadly, those leads ended up on the cutting-room floor after the Northwest men and women swept the MIAA basketball championships, but Bobby the Bearcat probably summed it up best when he took a broom to the lane at Municipal Auditorium moments after the Northwest men’s 57-51 victory over Emporia State. And I have one more now that Northwest has a football title and two basketball crowns: 2007-08 is the year of the Bearcat.

But enough of the puns and one liners, here is a wrap up of championship Sunday.

--- Northwest Steve Tappmeyer had the quote of the day with this analysis of the Bearcats’ first men and women’s tournament titles since 2004: “Somebody said it’s kind of like the Olympics. We do it every four years.” We’ll start making room in the trophy case for 2012.

--- On Saturday, Fort Hays decided to let DeAndre Townsend score and tried to beat the Emporia men by shutting down every one else. After watching Townsend drop 30 on the Tigers, Northwest didn’t make that same mistake. The Bearcats double teamed and trapped Townsend on most ball screens, forcing the ball out of his hands and usually keeping him out of the paint. Townsend had just 3 points on 1-of-3 shooting in the first half, finished 5-of-11 for 16 points and turned the ball over eight times compared to just three assists.

A tearful Townsend said this about the Northwest defense, “They bought into the defensive schemes. I just didn’t make some plays. Our coaching staff did a great job of letting me know how they were going to play me. All I could do is give it my all. Tonight I just couldn’t make any plays. I made some, but I guess I couldn’t make enough to get us over the top to win a championship.”

Townsend still scored 70 points in three games, placing him 10th in tournament history, and he doesn’t have a whole lot to feel bad about. The conference’s most entertaining player and his teammates just got out-gunned.

--- Speaking of, Emporia hit 7 of 11 3s in the opening 20 minutes, and at the Division II level, that sort of perimeter production rarely seems to carry over from one half to the next -- especially not for three consecutive games. True to form, Emporia went 3-of-21 from behind the arc to finish the game and got outscored in the paint by an astounding 26-4 margin. It’s tough to beat anyone with such a one-dimensional attack -- especially when shooting normally suffers in a third game in a three-days scenario.

Emporia’s Andrew Davison, who went 0-for-8 from downtown in the second half, said, “They felt good. I think most of them were pretty deep, and I’m sure they told their guys they didn’t want me to shoot on the line. They had been going in. For some reason they wouldn’t go in tonight.”

--- The Hornets’ faithful might be ready to lend an ear to some solid conference conspiracy theories after this season. The last time they met Northwest was the infamous cell phone incident in which a referee waved off Emporia’s game-winning basket after timing the replay with the aforementioned cell phone. Sunday, officials used replay to rule that a 3 by Townsend with 22 seconds left was actually a 2, making the score 54-51 instead of 54-52. And a few minutes before that, officials didn’t take the under-4-minute media timeout during a dead ball with 3:04 left. Coach Dave Moe claimed afterward his tired team needed that break. Instead, the Hornets gave up an offensive rebound, Jordan Fithian fouled out and by the time the media timeout came, Emporia was in a precarious position. And just to add insult to injustice, referees also made Emporia’s bench sit down during a particularly passionate moment in a pretty intense game, which was borderline ridiculous. So what did you do Emporia to draw the wrath of the MIAA?

--- On a much more productive note, the crowd for the men’s championship was fantastic. The box score only listed an attendance 1,769, which would seem pretty paltry in a 10,000-seat arena, but both sides’ supporters were jumping out of their seats for every made basket, screaming at officials and just generally acting as if this game was kind of a big deal. I think Merlin Olsen even stopped by from time to time.

--- And finally, it was a pretty grim final day among the media horde at Kansas City’s Ice Box. The conference opted not to serve food Sunday -- a move that even small high school tournaments find ridiculous. Then the wireless Internet went down and the stat monitors stopped working. Athletic conferences hath no furry like that of a journalist hungry and unconnected. We’ll hope for a more bountiful harvest in Texas later this week.