West region results

[northernGNAChoopfan]

Curious about SGAStump's perspective on this game from last night? Boy, that West kid was something in the first half! I also thought whomever the guard was that was popping balls loose at our hand-offs was going to cause more problems down the stretch too. Mohamed and Huerta had great games to compliment Shabazz and really were clutch down the stretch with Shabazz fouling out and missing the last few mins of regulation and all of OT. Thought that APU had control with 15 seconds or so left, the ball and only down by one, but they blew it waiting too long to make their move and then just having to chuck up a wild shot. And those announcers on the video stream... I'm confident it was not you SGAStump!

[Anchorage]

Bone is no longer coaching. I do agree with some of his tweets but hindsight is 20/20 from guy who quit the game. Shabazz was benched most of the year by his coach, and the game I saw in Nampa he was 5 for 16, and he had a number of games like that throughout the season. Bone couldn't move up in the profession so now he's criticizing the coaches in the conference for their vote on All Conference? His take on more teams from the GNAC being into the region is also questionable. The league can only blame itself on this one.

Talent-wise I think Shabazz is was one of the best players in the country and I still think so.

I hope Fairbanks goes to the final four I think it would be awesome but I'm trying to keep things in perspective. Last year Oregon State went to the elite 8 and everybody proclaimed their coach as awesome. This year he's 3 and 26 and he currently owns the two worst seasons in Oregon State basketball history.

Is Sparling a great coach? Should Shabazz have been on the first team? Should the conference have gotten one more team in regionals? I can see arguments against all of those things.

[tsull]

Great post and I would agree with the PacWest's failures against the GNAC this year should be taken into consideration. That said, in a real year UAF (and WOU) wouldn't even have made the playoffs -- and I actually like the previous format. Sparling wouldn't be rewarded for frankly a bad coaching job in the regular season with 2 good D1 transfers and one of the top D2 players in the country to finish last. (Didn't his kid have zero shot attempts yesterday? Nice.)

What college basketball has become is a complete ignorance of the importance of the regular season. It doesn't matter anymore. CBS gets horrific TV ratings from November through February, but March Madness is a multi-billion dollar contract so they stick with it. They literally could start the tournaments with no regular season in March and they'd get the same March Madness ratings. But back to D2, if UAF or WOU were left out this year, I was good with it. Yeah, WOU had a nice run through the playoffs, too, but still that was a crap team that had a 9-game losing streak in the season. No way should've UAA dropped two to them. I've watched WOU hoops a long time and this was one of the worst, not in talent, they have that, in togetherness, chemistry, defense, shot selection, etc. A nice run at the end doesn't nullify what I think was a sub-par coaching job and I think coach Pifer is better than that. I also realize I'm the only WOU fan commenting on this, and one of the few who cares. When you get 74 people to a game late in the year, no one cares, not even the A.D.

Yeah, perhaps CWU should've got in, they're no great shakes, IMO, a missed jumper away from losing to a bad WOU team in the playoffs. St. Martin's looked bad to me when I saw them, SPU looked lazy and entitled. WWU is living on past glory. NNU stunk this year, they had the talent to do better, IMO. The league dug its own grave, but you're right, the PacWest is not great either.

Sparling? He's a great recruiter and a good coach. If I'm another D2 school I probably don't hire him, to be honest ... and in my previous Oregon State reference, there's a reason no one came calling for Wayne Tinkle after his Elite 8 run.

[Anchorage]

Great post and I would agree with the PacWest's failures against the GNAC this year should be taken into consideration. That said, in a real year UAF (and WOU) wouldn't even have made the playoffs -- and I actually like the previous format. Sparling wouldn't be rewarded for frankly a bad coaching job in the regular season with 2 good D1 transfers and one of the top D2 players in the country to finish last. (Didn't his kid have zero shot attempts yesterday? Nice.)

What college basketball has become is a complete ignorance of the importance of the regular season. It doesn't matter anymore. CBS gets horrific TV ratings from November through February, but March Madness is a multi-billion dollar contract so they stick with it. They literally could start the tournaments with no regular season in March and they'd get the same March Madness ratings. But back to D2, if UAF or WOU were left out this year, I was good with it. Yeah, WOU had a nice run through the playoffs, too, but still that was a crap team that had a 9-game losing streak in the season. No way should've UAA dropped two to them. I've watched WOU hoops a long time and this was one of the worst, not in talent, they have that, in togetherness, chemistry, defense, shot selection, etc. A nice run at the end doesn't nullify what I think was a sub-par coaching job and I think coach Pifer is better than that. I also realize I'm the only WOU fan commenting on this, and one of the few who cares. When you get 74 people to a game late in the year, no one cares, not even the A.D.

Yeah, perhaps CWU should've got in, they're no great shakes, IMO, a missed jumper away from losing to a bad WOU team in the playoffs. St. Martin's looked bad to me when I saw them, SPU looked lazy and entitled. WWU is living on past glory. NNU stunk this year, they had the talent to do better, IMO. The league dug its own grave, but you're right, the PacWest is not great either.

Sparling? He's a great recruiter and a good coach. If I'm another D2 school I probably don't hire him, to be honest ... and in my previous Oregon State reference, there's a reason no one came calling for Wayne Tinkle after his Elite 8 run.

[tsull]

UAA looked great to me vs. SPU in the conference tourney, but like every single GNAC team this year, the play was inconsistent. Correct, no way does PacWest deserve 3 teams in. Also, as a rule I wouldn't go 4 deep to regionals. Fourth place is a consolation prize, what's the cliche fruit slices and participation trophies? The NCAA is big on that as probably the 7th place ACC or Big 10 team gets in today.

UAA is an attractive place for transfers, so I'm guessing Rusty does that. Big city, great arena, etc., being in the far North shouldn't push kids away, though I'm guessing it does. A lot of kids would rather sit on the bench at some god awful place like Portland State than start at UAA or any other GNAC team.

The league needs to get better. Yes, UAF has had a great run -- I picked them 2nd in the pre-season, to me this isn't a huge surprise. More shocking to me was finishing last in the conference with all that talent.

After the GNAC season is over I'll bore people to death with my take on what the league could do to get better.

[gratefuldad]

The UAF Cinderella story is good for the GNAC. Will it change their program overnight? Not likely. Fairbanks is just too severe of a climate for most recruits to consider.

[tsull]

Greg Sparling is an excellent recruiter, always has been. He had no problem bringing in talent to Central Washington University and he's done a nice job of getting talent to Fairbanks. I don't know if this run in the regionals will change things but I think Sparling will continue to bring in good players to Fairbanks.

[SGAstumpJ]

Curious about SGAStump's perspective on this game from last night? Boy, that West kid was something in the first half! I also thought whomever the guard was that was popping balls loose at our hand-offs was going to cause more problems down the stretch too. Mohamed and Huerta had great games to compliment Shabazz and really were clutch down the stretch with Shabazz fouling out and missing the last few mins of regulation and all of OT. Thought that APU had control with 15 seconds or so left, the ball and only down by one, but they blew it waiting too long to make their move and then just having to chuck up a wild shot. And those announcers on the video stream... I'm confident it was not you SGAStump!

Yeah, I'm the one who had to write the recap for the website from my kitchen table as that was happening. I was charitable and said Robertson got an attempt that was blocked, but he still waited about five seconds too long before even starting that drive. Shabazz was a monster in the 2nd half, and with him out, I thought we could pull it off. Kind of reminded me of how we lost the 2010 NAIA title game to Oklahoma Baptist, though in that one our guy made the shot he was putting up just after the buzzer. Great run for Alaska, and given how good Chico looked most of the season (I got to see their first two games in person down here last November) I have no doubt they'll do the region proud next week.