GNAC games, standings

[tsull]

Northwest Nazarene and St Martins are running away with the GNAC this year, CWU close by. They are impressive teams. I was surprised Billings lost at home to Simon Fraser on Thursday. I saw Billings last week and they were pretty impressive to me. D2 ball is interesting in that sometimes average and even bad eams rise up and win.

The two westerns, Oregon and Washington, are dead last in the league and haven't won a conference game. Less than a decade ago they played for the league title. Both of those programs have fallen on hard times.

[tsull]

I'll give credit where credit is due, Western Oregon battled Saint Martin's tough today before losing by 5 or so. The Wolves led by seven at half. St Martin's is just a good ball club, however, they're not only talented but they know how to win. But I've been ripping on Western Oregon for most of the season so I'll give them some credit today. It was a very good effort. They didn't make the plays down the stretch but I'll give them credit.

[northernGNAChoopfan]

Nooks lock down on defense and hand NNU their first conference loss of the season in Fairbanks this afternoon. Boy, Ostanik is doing a pretty good job shaping these guys into a team. Still too many mistakes, but being on par on defense helps so many things. Really like watching Saams-Hoy who has a big motor, particularly on defense.

[Anchorage]

Anchorage got a few wins in a row but the lack of offense returned this weekend. 53 points and 62 points scored in the two games? 40% shouting and 24% from 3 one game, 34% and 27% from 3 the next. This team just can’t score, no offensive talent. Going to be interesting next weekend when Fairbanks comes down and gets a win with a team they put together last minute.

[Goods]

UAF beating NNU on Saturday makes CWU's Thursday win over UAF shine a bit brighter. St. Martin's is the class of the league so far. They're top 20 in last week's poll. NNU was one out at 26, but they'll probably drop a bit.

MSUB is in the top 5 on the women's side. UAA will probably sneak into the top 25 this week.

[Goods]

And for those looking for more bang for your buck...........CWU women/men hosting two doubleheaders this week. Thursday 5/7:30 SPU comes into town for both teams. Saturday is Billings 4/6:30.

[northernGNAChoopfan]

UAF beating NNU on Saturday makes CWU's Thursday win over UAF shine a bit brighter. St. Martin's is the class of the league so far. They're top 20 in last week's poll. NNU was one out at 26, but they'll probably drop a bit.

MSUB is in the top 5 on the women's side. UAA will probably sneak into the top 25 this week.

I think it's important to remember that it's early. UAF played good defense on Saturday... Had they done that on Thursday, would it have slowed down Holden enough to make a difference? Who knows - some of Holden's shots were well defended, but overall, the on-ball defense was much better on Saturday to the point that NNU just couldn't get decent shots off and had some air balls and shots hitting the side of the backboard and shot clock violations. The win won't mean much for UAF if they can't get consistent, and of course the win / loss for CWU and NNU won't look good if UAF isn't consistent either. When UAF played St Martins before the holidays, it was an okay game for UAF, but not great. Beating them in Olympia will be a tall order. I think SMU, CWU, and NNU are likely the top teams in the GNAC, but I think it will be a real tossup after that. Slots 4 - 9 are really open right now. Anchorage will make a run - whatever they say about Rusty, he always gets his guys clicked in at some point, SPU is getting better, Montana will click in, etc. Should be fun seeing how it all goes down. I think SMU will get beat at some point too; they aren't that much better than everyone else, it's just everyone else is still putting the pieces together.

[D2Rover]

Western Washington looked as promising in the non-con this year as we have in a while I thought. Given we got a road win at Billings this weekend, I'll second the comment above on saying it's early. I don't think we're winning the conference, but we could right the ship and make the conference tournament. Which to be fair should still be considered hard times for us.

Women got a big comeback win against Central this week. Been injured so bad we have volleyball players playing significant minutes, but still 4-2 in conference and starting to get healthy. Billings and probably Anchorage are still better than us, but if we get a little healthier pulling an upset or two to win the conference tournament isn't impossible. There's a big gap between the top 5 and bottom 5 on the women's side.

[Anchorage]

I think it's important to remember that it's early. UAF played good defense on Saturday... Had they done that on Thursday, would it have slowed down Holden enough to make a difference? Who knows - some of Holden's shots were well defended, but overall, the on-ball defense was much better on Saturday to the point that NNU just couldn't get decent shots off and had some air balls and shots hitting the side of the backboard and shot clock violations. The win won't mean much for UAF if they can't get consistent, and of course the win / loss for CWU and NNU won't look good if UAF isn't consistent either. When UAF played St Martins before the holidays, it was an okay game for UAF, but not great. Beating them in Olympia will be a tall order. I think SMU, CWU, and NNU are likely the top teams in the GNAC, but I think it will be a real tossup after that. Slots 4 - 9 are really open right now. Anchorage will make a run - whatever they say about Rusty, he always gets his guys clicked in at some point, SPU is getting better, Montana will click in, etc. Should be fun seeing how it all goes down. I think SMU will get beat at some point too; they aren't that much better than everyone else, it's just everyone else is still putting the pieces together.

We will see on Anchorage. Man I just don’t see a high level of scoring ability out there. Granted I’ve only been to two games this year, they aren’t a fun watch. Noticeable drop off from even last year in ability to put the ball in the basket . And not big enough, strong enough or rebound enough to play a grind it out defensive style. There just always seems to be two guys on the floor of other teams that are playing at a higher level than anyone on UAA. That’s hard to overcome.

[Goods]

Well, would you look at that. St. Martin's goes down by two at Western Washington. Big win for the Vikings. NNU beats Billings and CWU downs SPU (in front of 1000 fans).

Bad day for the top teams as on the women's side, Billings (top 7 in the nation) gets beat by Nazarene. CWU gets by SPU pretty good too.

[SGAstumpJ]

Rough one here too on Wednesday. APU lost both halves of a doubleheader against first-year program Vanguard. The Lions have always had an excellent women's hoops program, and will as long as Russ Davis wants to stay in charge (depending on how deep a run they make in the NCCAA playoffs he could reach 700 wins by the end of the season), but it still hurts knowing they came into Azusa and snapped the Cougars' 31-game winning streak in conference play. So it sounds like Dominguez Hills got a little breathing room on the women's side in terms of the race to host.

[tsull]

Huge win by Fairbanks over Anchorage at Anchorage. Wish I would have watched that one. Simon Fraser somehow lost the Western Oregon on Thursday, and turned around and beat St Martin's on Saturday. If anything, Division II basketball is interesting, but that score I don't get.

[Anchorage]

Yeah good win by Fairbanks. UAA shot the ball ok tonight but I saw this victory by UAF coming, One team is trending upwards and the other is trending down. Keep up the momentum Fairbanks.

[northernGNAChoopfan]

I was out of town for the weekend, so just was catching up on Saturday ball, including the Fairbanks win over Anchorage last night. It's hard to believe the Nooks got that done, after being down by 19 with 10 mins left in the game. Speaks to the inconsistencies on both sides. While I'm happy the Nooks got the win, they really are still having too many mistakes that they need to clean up... I still think Rusty will get his guys to click in and get a streak going, and I still think the middle of the GNAC is any team's game on any given night. I'm not as surprised at Simon Fraser beating the Saints - when I watched UAF play Simon Fraser at Simon Fraser, the Red Leafs looked pretty good to me and it was a very tough game to win, while it seems the Saint's are struggling. It'll be interesting to see how they do at home this week against, what seems to be the toughest traveling pair of teams in CWU and NNU.

To me, the best GNAC team I've seen is CWU, while I think WOU is going to have the hardest season... I think there's a lot up for grabs in between. Sorry Tsull... I know what it's like to be in the basement; that's where Fairbanks dwells too often, but I have to enjoy it when we're not dwelling there... I think you guys need a coaching change; Pfifer has had enough time to at least give some indication of what's he's trying to build and it seems to me, the route to success he's going for is still indecipherable to those who follow the team closely.

Meanwhile, our women's program lost one of their best players for undisclosed reasons (which apparently means not to an injury, but to an internal problem). It seems like our women are not just camping in the basement, but have started setting up permanent housing in the basement. Not sure our still-relatively-new head women's coach has shown the vision she sees for the program or how she's going to get there either...

[Goods]

Great wins by CWU men and women all weekend, going 2-0 apiece. Huge game for CWU men at St. Martin's on Thursday night, will try and watch that one. A win there and I'll be more confident. I don't expect an undefeated GNAC season, too many good/decent teams, but CWU's gotta win these to influence future regional rankings. Wildcat women need another sweep as well against two middle of the road teams (St. Martin's/Western Oregon). Things are looking good, trending to pretty good, and hopefully great in Ellensburg.