GNAC hoops notebook

[tsull]

Five teams undefeated in league: Simon Fraser, Alaska-Fairbanks, Alaska-Anchorage, St. Martin's, and SPU. Rough league starts for NNU, WOU, and CWU.

Alaska has both men's and women's players of the week, both went off in the scoring department.

Should be a fun season:

http://www.gnacsports.com/mbasketbal...erence-starts/

[CWU Wildcat Nation]

Tonight CWU hosts Multnomah, who yesterday gave up 146 points at EWU! Their defense allowed over 100 points per game but their offense averages over 100 points too. Their star player averages 32 ppg. Should be a thriller of a game.

[tsull]

Tonight CWU hosts Multnomah, who yesterday gave up 146 points at EWU! Their defense allowed over 100 points per game but their offense averages over 100 points too. Their star player averages 32 ppg. Should be a thriller of a game.

I'm not sure why D2 teams are playing exhibitions this late into the season. WOU has Corban tonight, NNU is playing a freaking alumni game. It loses my interest really quick. Want to get me to the gym and away from a sports bar or big screen? Schedule some decent opponents and actually promote it a little. I'd rather see another conference game or a Cali D2 team, something besides this garbage. Because everyone else does it isn't an excuse ... and yes, D-1 schools are as bad as anyone, WSU, OSU, UO, UW, etc., schedule a bunch of dogs in the pre-conference season.

No wonder college basketball attendance is dropping like a rock.

[northernGNAChoopfan]

I had of course noticed that UAF swept all weekly awards after the opening conference week... Women's player of the week, Gandara is really fun to watch; very athletic. Looks like the women will probably go through some growing pains this season, but they are worlds better than the previous decade or so. I like the new coach and their assistant is solid too. I hope they will find a way to get middle of the pack this season and shoot for slipping into the GNAC tourney. Might be a stretch; they opened with pretty easy conference games and went 1-1, but the ceiling is a lot higher for them now than it has been for a long time.

The men got player of the week as well in Shabazz as well. He certainly is a gifted scorer, but I really think the key to not ending up in the basement of the GNAC is not that he will need to score a ton every night, but rather that the supporting crew around him will have to find their offense as well, because he's going to be bound to have off nights and most likely will start getting doubled hard in early January. And their defense is going to need to tighten up too. Going 2-0 the first week was mostly because of a gift from WOU and the luck of pulling out on top in 2OT with Concordia, so I hope they recognize that their issues of losing by 30+ in preseason are not gone completely and that they are going to need to really keep working to pull themselves out of the basement.

The men also get GNAC team of the week too. I don't know that it's ever happened that UAF swept all three awards. None of this even made it into the local newspaper here either. The reality check will come in early 2020 as both teams will resume play at SMU and SPU; hopefully their high flying confidence from the first week will have dissipated, because sometimes these awards are more of a curse the week after you win them and have a rough week.

Regardless, it was a nice way to open the season. I would agree with Tsull on the slurry of cream-puff games going into the holidays. It's a rough season to have such a long break after conference play starts, but cream-puff games are not interesting to me either.

[Anchorage]

[tsull]

That's how you schedule, though with the West having so few D2 schools, I know it's tough, and WOU already did their California trip. The creampuff exhibitions don't do much except get a rather formal practice going. Not sure what the answer is with cash-strapped athletic departments and few D2 west coast schools.