THE SCHEDULE
Friday, Dec. 29                     Westminster at Seattle Pacific
                                       Brougham Pavilion (2,650) / Seattle, Wash.
                                       Live Webcast        Live stats
 

SEATTLE – Back from their holiday break, the Seattle Pacific Falcons are gearing up to head full-on into their conference schedule.
 
But first, one final non-conference game is on the docket.
 
That will be on Friday when SPU welcomes Westminster University to Brougham Pavilion. Tip-off is set for 1:00 p.m. The Griffins are from Salt Lake City and are part of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference, beginning their move to Division II in 2015 and becoming full-fledged members in 2018.
 
Seattle Pacific (4-7) is looking to bounce back from a tough Northern California road trip just prior to Christmas, falling 70-66 at Stanislaus State and 62-46 at Fresno Pacific.
 
FOLLOW IT LIVE
Friday's game will have a free live Webcast and live stats. Greg Sexton will call all of the action.
 
ONE FOR THE BOOKS
Recording her first collegiate double-double was certainly a significant accomplishment for Schuyler Berry in the Dec. 14 game at Stanislaus State.
 
 

But she went further than that. The center, a 6-foot-3 junior, put her name into the SPU record book.
 
Berry went a perfect 10 for 10 at the free throw line in the narrow 70-66 loss to the Warriors. That made her the first Falcon ever to have double-digit attempts and make all of them for a perfect 1.000 percentage.
 
Qualifying for the record requires a minimum of 10 attempts. The previous standard was .929, set initially by Kerie Hughes in 2002, and matched by Jordan McPhee in 2018.
 
Apparently, that was the start of a very productive trend, although nobody had any way of knowing it at the time. Just five days later on Dec. 19, Shaw Anderson set a new free throw accuracy standard for SPU men's program by going a perfect 16 for 16 in a 73-66 win against Cal State San Marcos. The previous best had been 14 for 14.
 
SO WHAT'S THE STORY THIS WEEK?
-- Although the Falcons have spent most of their season on the road, they are a perfect 3-0 at home.
-- Seattle Pacific and Westminster will meet for the second time. The teams played at the Central Washington Tournament in November 2021, with the Falcons scoring a 70-60 victory.
-- The Griffins played previously in the NAIA's Frontier Conference before starting the transition to D2 in 2015.

-- This is SPU's third game of the year against a Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference team, having played at Colorado Christian and at Metro State on Thanksgiving weekend.
-- The game will count toward the West Region rankings, even though Westminster is not a West Region school. The RMAC is considered a 'contiguous' conference (i.e., it's "right next door" to the GNAC), so results against those schools are part of a team's regional record.
-- SPU is 18-15 all-time against current RMAC schools.
-- Former Falcons player Beth Pettingill (now Elizabeth Means) is a senior at Westminster, having transferred there prior to the 2022-23 season. During her two years with SPU (20-21 and 21-22), she averaged 5.5 points, 3.4 rebounds, and shot .425 from the field.
 

-- Sophomore center Emilia Bishop had the first double-digit game of her career with 12 points at Stanislaus State on perfect 6-of-6 shooting from the field.
-- Freshman 5-foot-4 point guard Haylie-Anne Ohta grabbed a career-high seven rebounds at Fresno Pacific on Dec. 16.
-- Seattle Pacific is looking to bounce back from its coldest-shooting game of the season, having hit just 25 percent (13 of 52) at Fresno Pacific. Prior to that, the Falcons had been in the 40-plus percentage range for five straight games.
-- At 12.4 points per game, SPU leading scorer Olivia Mayer ranks No. 13 in the GNAC. Her 7.7 rebounding average, also tops for the Falcons, is No. 8 in the conference.
-- Freshman Layne Kearns and junior Schuyler Berry rank  7-8 in GNAC free throw shooting: .840 for Kearns (21 of 25) and .829 for Berry (34 of 41).
-- Berry also is tied for No. 6 in blocked shots at 1.1. Mayer is all alone in No. 9 at 1.0.
-- Coach Mike Simonson is 1-0 vs. Westminster.
 
SCOUTING THE WESTMINSTER GRIFFINS: 2-7, 0-5 RMAC (tie 14th)
All-time series: SPU leads 1-0.  Current series streak: SPU won 1.  Last time: SPU 70, WU 60 (Nov. 27, 2021 at Ellensburg).  Griffins on the Web.
Griffins in a nutshell: Westminster swept two straight at home against Alaska Fairbanks in mid-November, but has lost five straight since then, in RMAC play. Sophomore 5-foot-7 guard Teuila Nawahine is the only Griffin averaging in double figures at 12.6 points per game. She had back-to-back 27-point performances in the Fairbanks series, the second of which was a double-double with 11 rebounds. Jaycee Lichte, a junior 5-11 forward, averages 9.8 points and is one of Westminster's better shooters at .488 from the field. Another solid shooter is junior 5-9 forward Za'kkria Robinson at .500 (31 of 62). Maunaiya Harrigfeld, a senior 5-11 forward, cleans the glass at a rate of 9.7 rebounds per game, No. 3 on the RMAC list. Of her 87 total, 26 have been at the offensive end.
 
BIG REBOUNDING IN SMALL PACKAGES
At 5 feet, 6 inches – the smallest of the 12 Falcons – freshman guard Haylie-Anne Ohta isn't normally going to be looked to for crashing the boards.
 
 

But she'll take whatever she can get – and in the game at Fresno Pacific on Dec. 16, Ohta got more rebounds than any of her taller teammates, pulling down a career-high seven.
 
Ohta also has had a pair of four-rebound outings. And, of her 22 total boards, nearly one-third of those – seven, to precise – have come off the offensive glass.
 
In playing 10 of SPU's 11 games (with five starts), Ohta is averaging 2.2 rebounds, along with 3.4 points per night. With starting guards Hunter Beirne and Hailey Marlow out for both games of the mid-December road trip to Northern California, Ohta started both and played 36 minutes in both.
 
 

SIMO SAYS …
(On the NorCal trip)
"The stretch before Christmas (was) hard. We've had the injury bug pretty bad, and we haven't been able to practice as much as I'd like. Those are not excuses, but it's reality.
 
(On returning to action after the break)
"If we come back after break and get to work and roll up our sleeves, I'm really excited for what this team can do. If we work hard and focus on ourselves, we'll be a really good team. If we don't work hard, tough games like (Fresno Pacific) can happen. In basketball, you get what you deserve."
 
FROM NOW ON, IT'S ALL GNAC
The 10-game non-conference portion of the schedule concludes with Friday's game against Westminster. The final 16 games will be against Great Northwest Athletic Conference opponents. Of those 16 contests nine will be on the road and seven will be at home. (The Falcons already have two GNAC home games in the book, having swept the Alaska schools on Nov. 30 and Dec. 2.)
 
Of the seven home games, five will be parts of doubleheaders with the SPU men. The nine road games will have six as part of doubleheaders and three stand-alones.
 
FALCONS REPLAY
-- Schuyler Berry had a double career-high of 22 points and 16 rebounds, Olivia Mayer added her own double-double of 12 points and 10 rebounds, but Stanislaus State closed on an 11-4 run to pull out a 70-66 victory in Turlock, California on Dec. 14.
 
-- Mayer, Layne Kearns and Grace Leasure tallied eight points apiece, but a drought of 7 minutes, 22 seconds bridging the first and second quarters, and 2:42 at the start of the third was enough of an opening for Fresno Pacific to move in front and ultimately take control on the way to a 62-46 win against SPU in Fresno on Dec. 16.
 
AROUND THE WEST
Central Washington (10-3, 2-0) went into the Christmas break as the hottest team in the GNAC, having won seven in a row after a 3-3 start. Montana State Billings (11-3, 2-0) continues to own the conference's best overall record after splitting a pair of closes ones at the Daytona Beach Shootout in Florida: a 59-58 loss to West Texas A&M, followed by a 63-61 victory against St. Mary's of Texas. Alaska Anchorage (6-5, 0-2) won its last four prior to the break.
 
Stanislaus State remains alone atop the California Collegiate Athletic Association at 4-0 (9-5 overall). The best overall record belongs to Sonoma State at 8-3 (3-1 CCAA). Cal State San Marcos is tied with the Seawolves for second in the conference standings and is 6-3 overall – but all three of those teams lost their last pre-break game. The longest current winning streak is two by Chico State and Cal State Dominguez Hills.
 
Fresno Pacific and Azusa Pacific are tied for the top spot in the Pacific West Conference, both at 3-0. Fresno has the best overall record at 9-2; Azusa is 9-3. Both are on five-game winning streaks. Dominican also is 9-3 overall, but it just 2-2 in conference play.
 
UP NEXT
The Falcons will start 2024 on the road, visiting Northwest Nazarene on Thursday, Jan. 4 at 4:15 p.m. Pacific time. Then it will be a trip to Ellensburg on Saturday, Jan. 6 to take on Central Washington. That one also starts at 4:15. Both games are doubleheader openers, to be followed by the SPU men against those same opponents.
 
 
 
GNAC STANDINGS
                                                       GNAC        Overall
Montana State Billings    2-0      11-2
Central Washington        2-0      10-3
Seattle Pacific           2-0       4-7
Western Washington        1-0       9-2
Western Oregon            1-1       6-5
Northwest Nazarene        1-1       4-5
Simon Fraser              0-1       8-6
Alaska Anchorage          0-2       6-5
Saint Martin's            0-2       2-7
Alaska Fairbanks          0-2       2-10