Mustang basketball teams prepare for regionals from MWSU Campus Watch on Vimeo.

With the NCAA Division 2 basketball championship beginning on March 13, both the men’s and women’s basketball teams have been selected to fight for a national championship.

“Any time you can get to the tournament, you got a chance to advance and that’s what you want and these kids deserve it. They’ve worked hard,” said Noel Johnson, women’s basketball head coach.

The third-seed women’s team will take on sixth-seed Colorado Christian at noon, March 13, at the First United Bank Center in Canyon, Texas.

However, looking past Colorado Christian, the players said they are anxious to earn a rematch with West Texas A&M. The team fell to West Texas A&M two times this season, with the last loss coming last Saturday in the Lone Star Conference Championship game, 70 to 73.

“Every time we have played them was a winnable game, so we know what it takes, and their game and our game plan, so we know what it takes to beat them,” Taylor Dowd, senior forward, says.

The seventh-seed men’s team will take on the second-seed Metro State at 2:30 p.m. on March 14 at Wisdom Gym in Stephenville, Texas. This is a rematch from the 2014 regional championship game which MSU lost, 56-78.

“We’ve been keeping up with those guys all year long, so we’re very familiar with them, of course we played them the last two years in the national tournament and came up a little bit short,” said Nelson Haggerty, men’s basketball head coach.

After losing to Cameron in the first round of the Lone Star Conference Tournament on March 5, the players didn’t know if they were going to make the tournament or not.

“Just waiting on this opportunity and finding out we got selected, it’s a blessing and I’m pretty sure all my teammates are ready to show what we could have done this past weekend,” said Bretson McNeal, junior guard.

The women will leave Wednesday evening and the men will leave Thursday evening for the tournaments.