Category: nightlights

NightLights!

This is the first of the year for this, but… Why not? We are SO pumped after an absolutely amazing night of games, and… We like to be semi-autonomous and not rely on the conference for info regarding the math of who’s in and who’s out, and so here’s what we figured:

MSUB is 100% in because they won both of their games this week.

UAA vs. WWU vs. SFU:

UAA’s highest finishing win was against NNU, who is now third.
WWU’s highest win was against #1 SMU, they lost both to #2 SPU, and they lost both to #3 NNU.
SFU’s highest win was against #1 SMU, aka the regular season champions, they lost both to #2 SPU, and then split with #3 NNU.

Credit to the Clan for restoring our confidence in our knowledge of GNAC men’s basketball, because it’s official:

SIMON FRASER MADE THE TOURNAMENT!!!!!!!!

Now, for Individual Night Lights -basically just what jumps out at us when we look at the numbers.

  • Zack Rollins of MSUB went 6-7 FROM THREE!!
  • Brendan Howard of MSUB also had a great night with 25 points on good shooting.
  • Dakota Ayala of CU-PDX had a double-double on great shooting and great rebounding. Hopefully his face remains intact. It seems like every time we watch the Cavs, Dakota ends up bleeding. Love it. We love super physical basketball, and of any injury… Blood, a guy is 100% going back in. Anything else and the odds are wayyy lower, so blood is great with us.
  • CU-PDX DIDN’T FOUL TREVOR JASINSKY!!!!!!!!!!!! We’re so proud of you all collectively. Very smart play.
  • Cameron Retherford of WWU had a super efficient game.
  • CWU and SMU played a 2OT game.
  • Rhett Baerlocher of SMU saw a whopping 45 minutes.
  • BJ Standley, also of SMU, saw a whopping 46 minutes OFF THE BENCH.
  • SPU collectively out-rebounded NNU 48-31.

Obviously there are plenty more fantastic numbers to talk about, but… It’ll wait for the morning.

We had a blast at NNU. Great people, amazing game, quality time-out entertainment. At one point they did Musical Chairs with blow-up chairs straight out of the early 2000s and the nostalgia was real.

Thanks so much for a great final night of the regular season, all of the deets will be up in the AM.

Be safe, have fun, go GNAC!

Shenanigans: GNAC is Bae.

Dear 2016-2017 GNAC Men’s Basketball Players,

We love you. It’s been less than a week and you’ve already made our heart sing like whoa.

Transfers -you’re great, you’re amazing, we’re so excited and happy to have you and you’ve proven it so much already in just two measly D2 games. Olivier-Paul, you know what we think. Taylor Stafford we’re so proud of you. Ali Faruq-Bey you are our bae and are fantastic. Not really; the bae is hyperbole, the fantastic is for real. Kedar Wright, we’re happy to have lost Patrick Simon II because we’ve got you instead -100% worth it.

Returners that have stepped up their games majorly already, even when we were expecting it out of a number of you -we love it. We’ve missed you. Tanner Omlid, you were good last year and we’re already so proud of you this year. Tyler Copp and Trey Ingram, it was a whole year of not really getting to write about you two and yet this year here you are again and it’s wonderful. Naim Ladd is stepping up big, we see dat shooting. Joe Rasmussen, putting up numbers, what’s with this craziness. He’s still pawning off rebounding on everyone else, but he’s now only moderately bad at defense rather than full out refusing to play it, so that’s progress. There are more of you and we love you and we promise you’ll get gushed about too in good time if you just keep putting up those numbers.

Frosh are rocking it hardcore and we’re cooing like there’s no tomorrow. Tony Miller. Daulton Hommes. When little kids effectively rebound, it’s so great. So far you’re the only frosh that have seen big minutes and rocked it but we love you to death, which both of you know, but still. To any other frosh that might read this: We can’t wait to be excited about you! We know you’re going to be great.

To all GNAC players -come the mid point of the season, if you’re passable at all, we’ll be complaining about you. It’s what we do. It’s one of the reasons our own school loathes us -they’re usually really good, and yet if you heard us talk about them, you’d assume they’re at the bottom because we’re always like “ugh, we have so much to work on, I can’t believe they did that, that is not acceptable, we’re never going to win like this,” when they just won a game by 20. Never stops.

So yes. We do genuinely love all of y’all and are already so proud and feel so blessed to get to write about amazing guys like you! Super cheesy, but super true, so thank-you.

Love,
The GNAC Men’s BasketBlog

P.S.

Our readers are awesome too. Yes, even you.

We went to write tomorrow morning’s preview and then this came out, so… Okay. We’ll go with it. The fingers know.

1st NightLights of the Year!

And they’re somewhat out of desperation, but that’s okay because we’ve got amazing guys and a nebulizer in our mouths so yay being occupied!

Initial score reactions:

-Hey! Simon Fraser kept it close against Hilo, nicely done!
-AAAAAAH, SEATTLE PACIFIC BEAT HUMBOLDT, HOLY GUACMOLE!!!!!!!!
-MSUB, quality loss to Cal Baptist.
-CWU BEAT SAN BERNARDINO IN OT!!!!!!!!!!!! Go Wildcats!!!!!!!
-Chaminade beat Anchorage, ahahahahaha. We love Anchorage this year, it hasn’t always been like that.
-*Insert a long string of words we don’t use on this blog.* WOU beat PLNU by two points. We could not have asked for a better score, oh my goodness, we love you Jim Shaw, congrats Wolves, we’re so so so happy.
-Western Washington beat Sonoma state *nods.* We want WWU to do well, but it’s time to prove it.
-CONCORDIA BEAT MONTEREY BAY!!!!!!!! Convincingly. Good score, it was by like 10.
-LKSLKDSLFJKDFJLK LKSDJFSLDKJF !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Saint Martin’s beat FPU. By a lot. Teamwork makes the dreamwork.

Northwest Nazarene killed Simpson. Praise God.

UAF, tbd. Can’t access any of their stats or scores because their twitter isn’t updated, nor is HPU’s, and HPU has a paywall. Whatever. Apparently they don’t want us to care. *shrugs* But seriously: It’s D2, get over yourselves.

Now, Nightlights:

–Kedar Wright of SFU shot 90% from the line and had 12 boards.
–Zach Lessinger of MSUB had 18 points off the bench on 70% shooting from the field and 80% from the line.
–Dom Hunter of CWU (formerly UAA) was 8-8 from the charity stripe.
–Niles Fuquan also of CWU had 18 points off the bench.
–Suki Wiggs (UAA) was 17-19 from the line.
–Tanner Omlid (WOU) had 10 boards and six steals with zero turnovers. Um, wow.
–Daulton Hommes (WWU) had 29 points and was 11/13 from the field with other good numbers and NO bad numbers. Wow! We are SO proud.
–COLEMAN WOOTEN (SPU) had 26 points and 11 rebounds!!
–TYLER COPP (SMU) HAD 24 POINTS, 10 BOARDS, AND FIVE ASSISTS!!! He was one of our favorite underclassmen a couple of years ago but didn’t do too much last year, and we’ve missed writing about him.

So many great numbers we don’t even know what to do with ourselves. Last year we were struggling week after week to come up with 11 nominations for player of the week and now it’s one night and every single team had a guy putting up awesome numbers. Plenty of more guys will get highlighted tomorrow morning, but these are the ones that are “Whoa, that’s amazing.” A lot of the guys above were playing essentially their first D2 games or seeing major minutes for the first time. The only names up above that are like “Yeah, duh” are Suki and Tanner. Tyler Copp was awesome a couple years ago but didn’t do too much last year. Coleman started a few games, but it was super tentative. Tanner, even, we really like him and thought he was great last year, but he didn’t start full time or anything on what was a loaded team. He’s going to be expected to carry the load this year and so far so good.

We feel completely elated right now… This was a better day than we could have possibly hoped for. Really, really really excited. The Anchorage loss… We’re honestly not worried, largely because every other team carried us so well.

Seriously, again: So proud of all of the guys tonight, the GNAC did fantastically, we can’t wait to talk about tons more highlights in the morning. Theoretically that post and the preview post will go up before 2pm, if they’re not up by that point it’ll be another NightLights post and then we’ll deal with all of the results on Sunday. This is what happens when football and basketball overlap… Chaos. We love it. It’s the best.

Welcome to Nutso November. Hang on!

Nightlights + The Usual Chaos

WOU lost to UAF and UCSD lost to San Marcos, but none of it surprises us any more because that is life in the D2West right now. Before we get into how it affects bids and things like that, we’re going to go over some NIGHTLIGHTS!!!!!! Yay. GNAC Men’s Basketball players are AWESOME. Not sarcastic, promise.

CWU @ WWU

Really sloppy game by both teams, but:

  • KYLE IMPERO (WWU) HAD 15 REBOUNDS.
  • JOE STROUD (CWU) HAD 11 BOARDS!!!!!!!
  • Both favored the defensive side of things, interestingly enough.

MSUB @ SMU

The Saints fought valiantly after being down by a lot but ultimately couldn’t complete the come back.

MSUB stuff:

  • PRESTON BEVERLY HAD 13 BOARDS!!!!!!
  • EMMANUEL JOHNSON HAD 22 POINTS!!!!!!! On roughly 80% shooting.
  • Mr. Sneeze (aka Sven) shot 100%.

SMU stuff:

  • TYLER COPP WAS 8/8 FROM THE LINE!!!!!!! If the Saints had pulled it off, he’d be our MVP.

It’s interesting Preston (we swear we didn’t forget you in frosh of the year stuff, only that you’re a freshman) responded huge to a completely unintentional overlook (you follow us on twitter, that gets you uuuuber bonus points with us, duh) and yet Rhett Baerlocher had a terrible game. We didn’t watch, but we’ll credit Preston with the defensive shut down of Rhett, just ’cause congruence.

CU-P @ UAA

UAA highlights:

  • COREY HAMMELL HAD 13 BOARDS. Aka played typically for Corey. We heart that kid soooo much.
  • BRIAN MCGILL HAD NINE ASSISTS. And is benefitting because we can’t find his listed turnovers, so that may or may not deserve to be highlighted, but oh well.

CU-PORTLAND DIDN’T SEND SUKI TO THE LINE 20 MILLION TIMES!!!!!!!!!!!! They limited him to four free throws, which is a miracle and amazing and congrats Cavaliers, ridiculously proud of you.

WOU @ UAF

UAF:

  • TRAVANTE HAD 11 BOARDS AND 25 POINTS!!!!! While going 10/12 from the line.
  • EVERY SINGLE PLAYER IN THE GAME HAD A REBOUND. That’s huge.
  • THE NOOKS COLLECTIVELY HARASSED ANDY AVGI INTO BEING 2/11 FROM THE FIELD. Worst performance of the year. By far.

WOU:

  • DEVON ALEXANDER HAD A FULL HOUSE AND PLAYED REALLY SMART BASKETBALL.

West Region Stuff to Know

On Monday Cal Baptist beat Concordia-Irvine by 10, but we wonder if CU-Irvine is just tanking at this point to try and make sure the Pac-West gets more than merely their conference tournament auto-bid.

San Marcos upset UC San Diego, but San Marcos is ineligible for a bid to the tournament because they’re also in a transition year. They’re currently fifth in the CCAA so wouldn’t be looking at an at-large bid anyway. We don’t think it affects UCSD in any meaningful way because everyone has weird losses and San Marcos is a good team.

WOU lost to Alaska-Fairbanks. That means both the Falcons and the Wolves have losses to UAF and CWU. We’re still fully in the camp that WOU is pretty much hosting no matter what, because SPU just lost to CWU and SMU. Had the Falcons won, we’d still say that we’re all trooping down to Monmouth, but it would be much more of a discussion.

UAA beat CU-Portland, the Seawolves are still in contention for at-large bid, but who knows.

We honestly won’t have any real idea of non SPU/WOU/USCD/Chico bids until after the conference championship games have been played. It’s actually kind of a good year for whoever’s on the selection committee because it’ll be really hard to truly screw up our region. There are so many solid arguments for about 10 different teams, so… Provided those four are in, from where we stand now we’re prepared to not complain about any of the seeding nor any of the teams that get the nod/don’t get the nod.

See y’all tomorrow morning for a bigger run down of the GNAC games.

 

Nightlights: MSUB upsets UAA.

And you guys have been clicking and clicking and while we really don’t care about our traffic spikes… Secretly we do and on a night like tonight we’re especially more than happy to do some gushing about GNAC men’s basketball.

Remember: MSUB holds a very special place in our hearts for a lot of reasons: they were our undergraduate travel partner, the drive is our favorite, the fact that their coaches are bald and thus it reminds us of the only part of attending Seattle Pacific that we actually liked… And the bonus that their announcers are the best in the GNAC; it’s the only GNAC broadcast we’ll watch with the sound on.

With all of those great things and more… We didn’t really predict them to pull this off, but we did say it would be hard for UAA to get a win in Billings. It’s always hard to get a win in Billings. But a blowout by the Yellowjackets? By 20? Seriously? Seriously? That’s meant positively toward MSUB, not negatively toward UAA.

UAA highlight:

Suki had 27 points with only seven of them being free throws and actually shot almost 50% from the field, which is amazing especially for him, so he does deserve to be commended.

To the rest of the UAA team: Don’t beat yourselves up too badly. Transitive property of college basketball: Cal Poly Pomona lost to Cal State LA, NNU beat Cal State LA, you guys killed NNU, and NNU got killed by the Yellowjackets too. Everything’s kosher. It’s all good. D2West gonna D2West -you’re a part of it, a part of the cool kids.

MSUB highlights:

PRESTON BEVERLY HAD 13 BOARDS, FOUR ASSISTS, AND 25 POINTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! His shooting was fine. That’s a seriously legitimate line.

JORDAN PERRY SHOT 100%!!! Little bit less impressive because he only took four total shots, but 100% is 100%. Smart shot selection off the bench. Eight points, nothing to scoff at.

The msub TEAM shot 63% from three, making 17/27 shots. We don’t even know what to say about that. They shot the same percentage on threes as they did on free throws. That’s a Steph Curry stat, kind of. He shoots a higher percentage from three than other players do from the line.
—
Again: Of anyone, we believe in MSUB’s home court advantage and yet… When we finally remembered to check into the game, there was two minutes left, and the Yellowjackets were leading by roughly 20. We called someone over to check our screen and make sure we were seeing things correctly. We believe in MSUB, we believe in chaos, we’re fully informed in the lack of strength of schedule UAA possesses and yet… it came out of nowhere.

Congrats Yellowjackets, we’re supercalifragilisticexpealidociously proud of you.

We’ll talk about it more in the discussions post tomorrow morning. Pleasant dreams to all!

Nightlights: A POPPIN’ END TO 2015!

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we have no life, but it’s good we lack one because we got to witness an AMAZING DAY of GNAC men’s basketball and yes: It was in fact almost a full day.

Before anything else: BRIAN MCGILL IS BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Brian is bae.

Relax all of you jealous types. We could (and do) say that about approximately 175 guys; all of the GNAC, plus our beloved graduate program.

Oh god, NAIA basketball. All of the guys are for the most part between 6’0 and 6’5, and so at one point yesterday, our coach was pacing the bench (while we were down 30) going ‘DOES ANYONE WANT TO ACTUALLY PLAY THE FOUR OR THE FIVE?!? I DON’T CARE WHO, I DON’T CARE HOW TALL YOU ARE, JUST [EXPLETIVE] GO AND DO IT. GO! *points*

Good times. Not really. But in better times: We can’t even be mad on nights like this; frankly we’ve learned to love being wrong because if you’re writing a basketball blog and can’t embrace that -you’re gonna have a bad time.

We promise all of these exclamation points are 100% sincere, because these are the Nightlights: Where we just get to indulge in all of the great things that guys in our conference do and not worry about the implications of other stuff until NEXT YEAR. 

Game #1: UAF @ SMU.

  • The University of Alaska Fairbanks NANOOKS went a whopping 95% from the free throw line. Things got dicey, SMU was fightin’, the Saints shot 78%, but… MAKE YOUR FREE THROWS. The Nooks did and they got their first ‘W’ off the Tundra!
  • Those same Nooks grabbed a massive -46- boards. Forty-six. Sit there. Let it sink in. Appreciate it.
  • Bangaly grabbed 11 boards.
  • JOE SLOCUM, WHERE HAS HE BEEN?? GRABBED 10 REBOUNDS.
  • Also of note: Fred Jorg of SMU grabbed 11 boards as well, so that’s good too.

Game #2: SFU @ MSUB

  • Michael Harper (SFU) MADE 100% OF HIS TEN FREE THROWS.
  • Preston Beverley (MSUB) grabbed NINE boards off the bench.

Game #3: UAA @ SPU

  • *rumble* *rumble* *rumble* *rumble* Wait, what’s that we hear? SPU IS TUMBLING DOWN THE RANKINGS LIKE A GIRAFFE ON AN ESCALATOR. UAA got the win and we’re RIDICULOUSLY proud of them. Seriously.
  • SUKI WIGGS HAD 10 REBOUNDS. Sadly this really isn’t out of the norm for Suki so we rarely highlight it, but seriously: he does genuinely involve his teammates.
  • BRIAN MCGILL IS BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He came off the bench and had 11 points in 30 minutes.
  • SPU IS A COMPLETE MESS!!!!!!!!!!!! We know all of the rest of you consider that a highlight and it’s honestly amusing the heck out of us (we’re learning to like this whole David thing) so we’ll humor you guys.

Game #4: WOU @ CWU

  • JULIAN NICHOLS ACTED LIKE JULIAN NICHOLS!!!!!!!!!!!! We’ve missed him so much. He finished with 29 points in 36 minutes.
  • CWU GOT IT DONE!!!!!!!!!!! Seriously: We’re proud of you and while ya didn’t win pretty, you got it done against a very good WOU team and you deserve the highest of props.

Game #5 CU-PDX @ NNU, IN OVERTIME.

  • DREW MARTIN (who?) of CU-PDX HAD 30 POINTS AND EIGHT BOARDS. We’ve never seen numbers like these from one of this year’s Concordia guys, so… Whoa.
  • RILEY HAWKEN (also of CU-Portland) HAD 13 BOARDS OFF THE BENCH!!!!!!
  • The Cavs got their FIRST WIN OF THE YEAR, which via the transitive property makes them better than Dominican, so CU-Irvine take note about whatever schedule implications that has? <— sarcasm, just a bit.
  • JOEL DEVASTEY (NNU) had 10 boards.
  • Detwon Rogers (also of NNU) had 22 points!!!!!
  • The Crusaders fought really hard and played smart at the end. Bouna tried to hit the shot, it didn’t go in, but the decision to put the rock in his hands was right.

So much to be proud of but even more to work on. We’ll get into breaking down the good and the bad tomorrow morning, but for now… Enjoy these wins those who got them, and for those that came out on the losing side: Tomorrow is a new year.

 

Nighlights: Too Much Good Stuff.

Just kidding -there’s no such thing in basketball.

The seeding was announced by the GNAC on twitter and we’re going to post it here for you before anything else just ’cause:

#1 Western Oregon = BYE
#2 Seattle Pacific = BYE

#6 Northwest Nazarene vs. #3 Central Washington
#5 Western Washington vs. #4 Alaska Anchorage

How interesting are those match-ups? NNU swept CWU and UAA swept WWU. If WWU and CWU both win (which is our prediction, actually, then…

WOU faces WWU, having been swept by the Vikings.
SPU faces CWU, having recently murdered the Wildcats.

Any more speculation than that, we’re not going to go for. It’s too much. And we could be totally wrong about WWU and CWU winning the first rounds; being wrong is great -too competitive to be able to stand filling out real brackets; it’s more fun to watch the chaos and simply enjoy basketball being unpredictable.

What’s not unpredictable is the guys in our conference being AMAZING.

Here are the most fantastic of tonight’s highlights:

  • Riley Carel of SMU went out with a bang, picking up almost a full house with 16 points, four boards, three assists, and three steals.
  • Will Bond, also of SMU, had 16 points off the bench.
  • Derrick Fain was insanely close to a triple double with nine boards, eight assists, and 16 points. UM WHAT??
  • Dom Hunter had 15 points off the bench.
  • KALIDOU PLAYED!!!!!!!! He had eight points off the bench. Missed you Kalidou!
  • From CWU: Joe Stroud had 24 points; Dom Williams had 33 points whilst going 15-18 from the line.
  • Antoine Hosley, of MSUB, had an insane 50 points -going 16/25 from the field and 16/18 from the line, along with picking up seven boards, two assists, and five fouls.
  • NNU’s starters actually logged substantial field numbers; usually when teams play SPU you see a lot of 1s, 2s, and 0s.
  • Erik Kinney (of NNU) had a full house.
  • Matt Borton of SPU had 13 boards and 13 rebounds.
  • LEW THOMAS HAD 15 REBOUNDS AND 12 POINTS!!!!!! Little more enthusiastic because he hasn’t really done that much in weeks.

The full run down and thoughts about every game’ll be posted around midday tomorrow.

Nightlights: So Many Bounce-Back Games!!

We weren’t going to put this up, it’s going up at about 2:30am, it’s going to be ugly, it’s going to be bullet points, tomorrow’s post isn’t going to be much better, because ball is life and ball is crazy and thus life is crazy.

Still, there were so many awesome performances tonight that we couldn’t resist.

Nightlights:

  • Marc Matthews scored 24 points against SPU.
  • Matt Borton bounced back with a double-double!!
  • Michael Harper bounced back with a major point outing.
  • Julian Nichols had a monster game, including a full house, after being pretty silent on Thursday.
  • Lew Thomas managed to not be a liability (Lew Thomas is the Cory Hutsen of the Wolves… we love both of them, but they both often play much worse than they theoretically are).
  • Jordan Wiley had a fantastic game.
  • Jeff Parker had his second amazing game of the week.
  • Joey Schreiber was incredibly valuable for the Vikings off the bench.
  • Tyler Idowu posted a career-high (thanks SMU) 24 points and it was good to see him bounce back.
  • Trey Ingram had a better game than he’s been having.
  • Anchorage & Northwest Nazarene played a heck of a game that went into OT and was otherwise amazing if not lacking in defense a bit.
  • Travis Thompson & Derrick Fain (of UAA) combined for 65 points on pretty decent shooting.
  • Alex Birketoft had 29 points!!!!!!!! He’s a freshman *clap clap clapclapclap* Sorry -we can’t resist. So proud of that kid! Absolute blessing to watch.
  • Erik Kinney was one board away from a double-double!! 14 points and nine boards, plus four assists –quite nice.
  • Kevin Rima had a double-double -nice bounce back.
  • Almir had 23 points for the Nooks.
  • Tony Reese (can we call him that? That’s what we always think when seeing his name) had a nice 10 boards, also for the Nooks.
  • Dom Williams had 27 points as CWU escaped with their usual clinic of teamwork.
  • Terry Dawn had 12 boards.

Yes, it’s brief. It’s good to see so many guys bounce back. It was an awesome afternoon/evening of basketball, we can’t wait to look at it more in-depth; alas, there’ll be a post that goes up at 11am and then all will be silent until Monday afternoon.

GNAC you’s impressive and be a rockin’ da north. What’s sad is we’re not really impressive in context unfortunately, but we sure do still make each other look good.

Nightlights: Hi WWU! We Miss You Andy!

So WWU blows out WOU at Western Oregon when WOU doesn’t have Andy Avgi. Does that tell us anything at all? On the one hand, we appear to have our Vikings back -missed you WWU of old, really, really missed you- but on the other hand Andy is amazing and where did he go?

We noted in our preview of the game that generally speaking WOU expects to play their starters most of the minutes -Andy Avgi largely only plays 20 or so minutes in blowouts; he played something of 45 in 2OT against SPU. Had they had him tonight, we’re of the opinion that the score would’ve looked different, but the result might not have been.

Andy averages 18 points per game; WWU won by 23. Obviously Andy does more than that -he’s a big body, really makes you work around him, gets guys in foul trouble, all kinds of stuff, and yet… WOU had 30 boards; Andy averages close to six; WWU had 43. It is our view that WWU would’ve won even if the Wolves had Andy -WWU is a good team. Not as good as they’ve been in past years, but they’re by no means bad, especially now that they seem to be actually functioning cohesively.

Both Anye and Mac had double-doubles!! So proud of them. The Vikings cleared their bench, which if the Wolves had Andy and they managed this would be a good move, but honestly in light of it just kind of seems a bit tacky; good to see that Blake Bowen still exists. Pretty balanced minutes. It’s kind of a weird feeling, not going to lie. On the one hand you’re not surprised because it’s WWU, on the other hand WOU it’s not a real blow out.

Not sure what this implies for the rest of the conference unless Andy is out for the rest of the season; this late in the year, maybe nothing. Although… if WOU isn’t going to have Andy for the NCAA tournament and the Wolves don’t win the auto bid from the GNAC, if I’m a member of the selection committee I’m thinking long and hard about whether or not they deserve an at large birth.

Remember: Who would you rather play? Chico State or WOU without Andy? Yeah. So that’ll be interesting to see. You know they wouldn’t rest Andy just for fun this game -this was looming huge; they likely could’ve done it on Saturday without too much issue. Guess we’ll see.

With WWU: the Vikings are coming on strong, hopefully they’re not peaking too soon. Theoretically this is just them finding their groove. Tonight’s been just plain exhausting, so excuse the lack of enthusiasm over Anye and Mac.

CWU/UAA… Impressive how out of sorts the Wildcats got the Seawolves. Not particularly surprisingly, although still a bit surprising just how uncomfortable UAA looked. There was a question about why this blog isn’t convinced by the Seawolves -while it’s admittedly hard to win in Nicholson, it’s not THAT hard. That’s why the blog isn’t convinced by UAA; their best win is a sweep of WWU, while they’ve been swept by CWU, SPU, and if they’re not careful WOU this coming week. They’ve won when they’ve had to and been able to, nothing more, nothing less.

NNU/UAF was pretty par for the course. Biggest thing to note was some pretty bad shooting, with the exception of Bouna N’Diaye who served as a rockin’ 6th man. Awesome Bouna! Way to go. 12 points, 5 boards, 2 assists, all off the bench.

Other deets on tonight’ll be posted sometime tomorrow morning.

Nightlights: Frosh Rock Center!

Because there were a lot of awesome performances last night and sometimes formal is not the answer.

First and foremost: ALEX BIRKETOFT HAD 22 POINTS AND EIGHT REBOUNDS!!!!!!! He’s a freshman *clap, clap, clap clap clap* The loss is disappointing but NNU’s made major progress this year and while losing Kevin is going to be hard, they’re still going to have so much coming back. Part of their success is inevitably our weak conference, but it’s still cool.

Second: BOUNA STARTED!!!!!!!!!! Blog favorite. No rhyme or reason; he had some big games early in the season, but his name is just fun, regardless.

AnYES went 6-7 (ha! he is 6’7) and only picked up three fouls in 27 minutes. Again: we really, really like fouling, but the Vikings need Anye to be able to go deep; he wasn’t needed to go deep, but he does up his productivity accordingly and we’re so, so, so proud of him!! It’s a good day.

MAC HAD 20. There are so many people that are fun to be excited about. Mac is awesome and we totally believe in his improvement.

CORY HUTSEN HAD 23 POINTS. And was still terrible from the free throw line, but that’s okay. Obviously it almost wasn’t, but we’re not in a mood to complain. That’s back-to-back-to-back? 20 point games. We were very excited about him in our pre-season preview and he’d been letting us down but he’s starting to step up.

Also with the Falcons: Who’s Sam Simpson? Why hasn’t he played more? Kid scored 12 points off the bench and played 19 minutes… in one of the last regular season games? Ooookay. Baller status.

Gary Jacobs going 12-13. Yes it’s SFU and so it doesn’t quite count, but that’s still a shooting percentage in the 90s, which ALWAYS counts.

Overall a pretty sick night of basketball, lots of good center play. The SPU/UAA game was surprisingly good because quite deservedly we’d lost faith in the Falcons. Sam Simpson is apparently a 6’8 freshman, but weighs 190, which leads one to think of fellow frosh Alex Birketoft and wonder about the battles they could hold in the coming years.

Always good times. Tomorrow: POW nominees and the nod itself.