CWU Wins 2nd GNAC Season Title in Program History

[CWU Wildcat Nation]

It was not a pretty road trip, but CWU was able to come away with the GNAC regular season title and the #1 seed in the tournament. I was at the game at WWU (who perhaps cut their pep band?). Central had some terrible possessions and shot selections for much of the game. Then when they needed a comeback they put in their smallest and fastest lineup, benching Mav Sanders, Mitch Brizee, and Garrett Anderson. They went to the bottom of their depth chart to bring in deep reserves Noah Pepper and Xavier Kamalu-Vargas for their defense, and Central mounted a major comeback attempt until they finally ran out of gas. Still, the weather was great on Thursday and Friday so my dad and I had a nice little annual trip up to Bellingham regardless.

Then Central continued the struggled at SFU, trailing 24-7 at one point with 12 first half turnovers before they began to chip away and come back to win it and win the regular season title. Tournament hosts SMU men's team tanked at the end of the season to miss out on a spot in the tourney, with the Alaska Nanooks making it in. Can they make another Cinderella run like a few years back under Sparling?

On the women's side, UAA returned to their old dominating ways to win the season title by 2 games over Billings and CWU. Central does have the easiest path to a championship game appearance first facing #6 SMU then if they win, #2 MSU Billings.

[Goods]

St Martins gets to host both sides of the tourney and the men's team didn't even make it, while the women's team will be one and done. This guarantees a low gate.

[tsull]

Congratulations to the Wildcat men and the Alaska Anchorage women. Great seasons. I was pumping up St Martin's in the first couple weeks, I'm really surprised what happened. I'm guessing the head coach's absence played into this. I don't know what happened there. I've checked Olympia newspapers, the University's website, as usual division 2 fans are always left in the dark, which in turn hurts the support of their programs.

That said, regarding CWU, their coach is an alum, I believe, meaning you don't have to make it that complicated in your hiring. Part of Western Oregon's problems are doing silly things like hiring at women's coach from West Virginia, and the men's coach, who had barely stepped in the Northwest before taking the job. There's a ton of great coaches in the Northwest at the junior college, and small college ranks. There's no reason to make it confusing.

Congrats to the teams that have made the conference tournament, it should be an interesting one since there was no real dominant teams this year. Wish my school was in it, but sadly they deserve what they get for being so arrogant with their hires and not listening to key people when it comes time to make these decisions.

[SGAstumpJ]

St Martins gets to host both sides of the tourney and the men's team didn't even make it, while the women's team will be one and done. This guarantees a low gate.

That could be the reasoning behind something I just found on the PacWest website where, starting next season, for M/W Basketball, Softball and Baseball, it says the 2026 conference tournament will be hosted "at site of 2025 regular season champ". Now, for basketball, that means next year's tournaments are both at Point Loma. But what happens the next time there's a split?

[D2Rover]

With the number of teams that have to fly to the tournament, having the location planned out from the start of the year is beneficial for GNAC schools - don't want to go into the week before the tournament not knowing where you're booking flights to. Otherwise I would like to see us go to top-seed host as well. I know there are people around who like the idea of a consistent neutral-site location, which works well for many other D2 conferences. I would think the ShoWare Center in Kent would be ideal? Right next to the airport, centrally located, and having a consistent location in a nicer arena would give the tournament a more professional feel. I can't see attendance there being worse than SPU or neutral-site games in Lacey.

[CWU Wildcat Nation]

A neutral location would be better if they were able to fill the seats with fans. Also, wouldn't be able to do the top seed teams as hosts because we have the Alaska schools and having 5 teams and all their fans traveling to Fairbanks in the winter wouldn't be ideal!

[Goods]

With the number of teams that have to fly to the tournament, having the location planned out from the start of the year is beneficial for GNAC schools - don't want to go into the week before the tournament not knowing where you're booking flights to. Otherwise I would like to see us go to top-seed host as well. I know there are people around who like the idea of a consistent neutral-site location, which works well for many other D2 conferences. I would think the ShoWare Center in Kent would be ideal? Right next to the airport, centrally located, and having a consistent location in a nicer arena would give the tournament a more professional feel. I can't see attendance there being worse than SPU or neutral-site games in Lacey.

I like this from a fairness and a professionalism scale, but from a cost standpoint wouldn't that be more expensive? And, I've been to basketball tourneys at the ShoWare Center. It's a good arena, doesn't involved driving over a mountain pass, just minutes from SeaTac (which is a huge plus), but it can be pretty cavernous when playing in front of empty stands.

Plus, unfortunately you don't need that much space. Even with CWU hosting the tournament last year and playing every night, it wasn't a sellout, I think we had 1500 on the semifinal game and 2,000 at the GNAC championship in a renovated arena that seats 3,200.