Mid-Season Superlatives
Updated from pre-season:
Most Likely to Succeed: CWU.
Biggest Drama King: SMU or WWU.
Life of the Party: WOU -defense or offense, pick your poison and they’ll do it better.
Night Owl: UAA/UAF.
Early Bird: MSUB/NNU.
Overachiever: NNU.
Underachiever: SFU -non-conference got peoples’ hopes up.
Teacher’s Pet: SFU -everyone wanted to believe, now no one wants to doubt for fear of being called a jerk.
Best Dressed: SPU, which is a miracle because when Adidas posted this year’s D1 uniforms they were ugly; really ugly.
Biggest Gossip: CWU -someone’s always talking.
Best Smile: NNU -they’re happy to be here.
Biggest Prankster: WWU -everyone’s still on their toes at all times and no one has figured out what they’re doing yet.
Best Couple: Cenazar, shockingly -they have the best record out of any pair, winning 76% of their games.
New stuff:
Player-of-the-half way mark: Julian Nichols, as noted.
Team of the half way mark: Northwest Nazarene. Dropped a game at UAA but has come on super strong with nice wins at CWU, UAF, and SMU.
Most unexpected team: WWU for being bad, NNU for being good.
Most unexpected player: Travis Thompson (UAA) for being relatively bad, Alex Birketoft (NNU) for being a rockstar frosh.
Best 6th man: Sjur Berg, Shawn Reid, Gary Jacobs, Brent Counts.
Best team performance: WOU vs. SFU. Straight domination. SPU is second with their win against NNU.
Best player performance: Matt Borton against CWU -full house and a double-double with great shot selection.
Best team road trip (thus far): CWU @ UAA & UAF. Got the wins in a Alaska -that’s huge.
Best player back-to-back: Riley Stockton -had a double-double against the Alaska schools, on the prowl for a triple-double.
Teams on the rise: NNU, CWU, MSUB.
Teams at par: SPU, WOU, UAF
Teams that will get their spit together NOW: WWU, UAA, SMU, SFU.
Best coaching staff so far: MSUB & NNU -Central is impressive, but people want to go to Central which is not an advantage the other two schools have.
Coaching staff that needs to start believing in themselves again: WWU & UAA.
Coaching staff that needs to stop slacking in their mediocrity: SPU. Cory Hutsen looks lost on the court -the projected best center in the conference looks like he has no idea what he’s doing and has gotten worse as the season’s gone on.
MVPs thus far: Sango Niang, Momir Gataric, Ruben Silvas, Brian McGill –if SFU/MSUB/UAF/UAA loses that guy, their chances of recovery are about zero.
Could-be MVPs: Travis Thompson, Cory Hutsen, Riley Carel. Travis will be featured in our general discussion post tomorrow; Cory may end up getting tag-teamed with it.
Up next: Second half of the season predicted finishes and other musings on conference play and/or bracketology.
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