GNAC TOURNAMENT SCHEDULE
Nicholson Arena  / Ellensburg, Wash.
 
Thursday, March 7               No. 6 Seattle Pacific vs. No. 3 Alaska Anchorage, Noon
                                                First round
                                                Live Webcast        Live stats
 
Friday, March 8                    SPU-UAA winner vs. No. 2 Western Washington, Noon
                                                Semifinals
                                                Live Webcast        Live stats
 
Saturday, March 9               Semifinals winners, 5:00 p.m.
                                                Championship
                                                Live Webcast        Live stats
 
 
SEATTLE – With 10 minutes to go in the regular season, the Seattle Pacific Falcons didn't know if they'd have a postseason.
 
When those 10 minutes were up … SPU was in.
 
Thanks in part to a big fourth quarter that helped secure a victory at Alaska Fairbanks last Saturday, the Falcons will get a rematch with the other Alaska school – Alaska Anchorage – on Thursday in the first round of the Great Northwest Athletic Conference women's basketball tournament.
 
Seattle Pacific (11-17, 8-10 GNAC) and the Seawolves (18-8, 13-5 GNAC) will get the tournament started with a noon tip-off in Ellensburg at Central Washington's Nicholson Arena. The Falcons some as the No. 6 seed in the six-team tournament; UAA is No. 3.
 
SPU and Anchorage will be the first of two games on Thursday's docket. Host school Central Washington, seeded No. 4, tangles with No. 5 seed Simon Fraser at 2:15 p.m.
 
The Falcons-Seawolves winner meets No. 2 seed Western Washington (21-6, 14-4 GNAC) in a noon semifinal on Friday, followed by the Central-Simon winner against No. 1 seed Montana State Billings (25-5, 16-2 GNAC) in the 2:15 p.m. semi. The semifinal winners meet for the championship and the automatic berth to the NCAA West Regionals on Saturday at 5:00 p.m.
 
FOLLOW IT LIVE
All tournament games will have free live Webcasts on YouTube and free live stats. Shawn Walli and Dustin Daniel will call the action. The link for Thursday's Webcast can be found at the top of this story. If the Falcons win and advance to Friday's semifinals, please check the schedule bar across the top of the www.spufalcons.com homepage for that Webcast link.
 
EVERYTHING FOR FANS
Click on this link for a fan-oriented page that has the complete tournament schedule, ticket information, and appropriate links. Be sure to pay extra attention to the section on parking. Central Washington does enforce its parking regulations during regular business hours Monday through Friday, and the women's games on Thursday and Friday are occurring during business hours.
 
MOVING ON
While the GNAC, California Collegiate Athletic Association and Pacific West Conference tournament winners earn automatic NCAA invitations, there are still five at-large spots available in the eight-team West Region field for teams that do not win their respective tournaments.
 
Montana State Billings and Western Washington already have a firm grip on a regional berth, sitting at Nos 2 and 3, respectively, in last week's West rankings. Both are going regardless of how they do in the tournament. Anchorage (No. 9) and Central (No. 10) are on the bubble, but possibly could move up by making it to the title game.
 
SPU and Simon Fraser are unranked, so would have to win the tournament to advance.
 
TOURNAMENT TIDBITS
-- This is the 13th edition of the GNAC Tournament. The first one was in 2011. It did not take place in 2021 because of the pandemic.
-- The Falcons will be playing in the tournament for the 10th time, and for the third year in a row.
-- Last year as the No. 5 seed, SPU split a pair of games in Bellingham. The Falcons rallied past Anchorage in the first round, 69-65. Then, they went down to the wire in the semifinals against host and No. 1 seed Western Washington before the Vikings pulled it out by scoring the final six points of the game, 58-53.
-- Seattle Pacific's all-time tournament record is 7-9.
-- Its most successful tourney was in 2018. Playing that year at Alaska Anchorage, the Falcons advanced all the way to the championship game. Montana State Billings won it, 71-61.
 




SO WHAT'S THE STORY THIS WEEK?
-- Seattle Pacific and Anchorage will meet just one week after playing at the Alaska Airlines Center in the regular season's penultimate game. The host Seawolves won, 51-39.
-- SPU's defense limited Anchorage to its lowest point total of the season, 20 points below its 71-point average.
-- Along with a 62-59 victory at home on Dec. 2, the Falcons were the only team to keep the Seawolves below 60 points in both conference games.
-- The only other team to keep UAA below 60 was Western Oregon, with a 73-53 victory in Anchorage on Jan. 25.
-- After losing nine straight to the Seawolves, Seattle Pacific has won two of the last three.
-- Olivia Mayer scored 34 points in the two games combined, with 23 of those coming in Seattle on 10-of-18 shooting.
-- Hunter Beirne and Schuyler Berry joined Mayer in double figures in Seattle with 13 and 12 points, respectively. Both also grabbed seven rebounds in that game.
-- But Mayer was the only double-digit scorer in Anchorage with 11. Beirne and Berry had nine each. Beirne also had nine rebounds at UAA, tying her career high.
-- Mayer has three of SPU's five highest scoring games this season, topped by her 31 points against Northwest Nazarene on Feb. 3 in Seattle.
-- The other two in the top five are Beirne's 28 at Fairbanks last Saturday and Lolo Weatherspoon's 26 against Central Washington on Feb. 1
-- The Falcons have had no luck whatsoever from long range against the Seawolves, hitting a combined 3 of 35 (8.6 percent). They were 2 of 17 in Seattle and 1 of 18 in Alaska.
-- UAA forces a lot of turnovers – an average of 22.2 per game. The Seawolves forced 42 in the two games combined against Seattle Pacific (23 in Seattle, 19 in Anchorage), which they converted into 40 points.
-- SPU, which forces 15.6 turnovers per game, got UAA to cough it up 25 times in the two games combined, leading to 21 points.
-- The Falcons have had by far their two best ball-handling games of the season the past two weeks, with just five turnovers against Western Washington and five at Alaska Fairbanks.
-- Head coach Mike Simonson is 2-10 all-time against Alaska Anchorage.
 
SCOUTING THE ALASKA ANCHORAGE SEAWOLVES: 18-8, 13-5 GNAC (3rd)
All-time series: SPU leads, 43-39.  Current series streak: UAA won 1.  Last time: UAA 51, SPU 39 (Feb. 29 at Anchorage).  Last SPU series win: SPU 62, UAA 59 (Dec. 2, 2023 at Seattle).  Seawolves on the Web.
Seawolves in a nutshell: After a final topsy-turvy weekend around the GNAC, Anchorage comes into the tournament on the longest winning streak among the six qualifiers with three in a row. The third of those was an 84-72 overtime victory against regular-season champion Montana State Billings last Saturday in Alaska, as the Seawolves outscored the Yellowjackets during the five extra minutes, 17-5. As has frequently been the case this winter, senior 6-foot-3 forward / center Tori Hollingshead led UAA in scoring – and did it coming off the bench, this time with 22 points. She's averaging team highs of 13.0 points and 6.7 rebounds in 22.2 minutes per game and has been a reserve in 22 of the 26 contests, Junior 5-5 guard Senya Raboulin averages 12.2 points and is the leading playmaker with a GNAC-leading average of 4.1 assists (107 total). Junior 5-6 guard Jazzpher Evans chips in 9.5 points per game, and senior 5-9 guard Vishe' Rabb is at 8.9 points and 4.7 rebounds since returning in January from a knee injury that kept her sidelined for 10 months.
 
MAYER MAKES ALL-GNAC
Olivia Mayer served notice very early that she was going to be an impact player, both with Seattle Pacific and in the GNAC. She made that impact night in, night out – and the coaches noticed, voting her to the All-GNAC second team that was announced on Tuesday, the only Falcon to make the list.
 
Mayer finished the regular season in No. 8 on the conference scoring list at 15.5 points per game and No. 5 in rebounding at 8.1. She had five games of 20-plus points, including 31 at home on Feb. 3 in a 73-71 victory against Northwest Nazarene.
 
She also had 10 double-doubles, the latest of which was 15 points and 14 rebound in last Saturday's regular-season finale at Alaska Fairbanks, a 72-64 SPU victory.
 
In other GNAC stats categories,  Mayer is No. 13 in field goal shooting at .451, No. 15 in free throw shooting at .710, tied for No. 9 in steals at 1.5, is tied for No. 11 in blocked shots at 0.8, and is No. 6 in minutes played at 31.3.
 
ABOUT THAT DEFENSE …
Alaska Anchorage is known for it highly effective "mayhem" approach on defense, Seattle Pacific's style doesn't have a special name or anything like that. It's more along the lines of steady-eddy, even-keel, just-get-a-stop.

 

And it's highly effective, too.
 
To exemplify: In 28 games this season, the Falcons kept the opponents below their scoring average in 15 of them. Add it up, and it was 179 points below, an average of 12 points per game. The biggest differences were against Alaska Anchorage last Thursday with 51 (20 below its 73.1 average) Northwest Nazarene with 50 on Jan. 4 (nearly 20 below its 69.7) and Western Oregon with 47 on Feb. 10 (almost 18 below its 64.8).
 
The opponents scored above their average just nine times. The biggest one there was Metro State with 64 points on Nov. 25 (24 above its 40.0 average).
 
There were four games in which the difference was half a point or less: 68 for Colorado Christian (average 67.5), 55 for Saint Martin's (average 55.3), 73 for Western Washington (average 72.6) and 55 again for Saint Martin's (average 54.9).
 
 

SIMO SAYS ..
(On playing Anchorage again so soon)
"It's a great thing to play them again. Especially up there (last Thursday), it was almost like a dry run; it was like a practice. They're very hard to simulate. The teams that do well against them are teams that are experienced against them. … We're excited to play them again. It makes scouting a little bit easier (having seen them just a week ago), but also hard because you never know what curveballs they're going to throw at you."
 
(On keeping the Seawolves in check)
"We've guarded them well. I think we've done a good job making it difficult on them. But we must have the same type of energy that we had in Alaska. We must rebound better. To me, that was one of the biggest differences in (last week's) game was rebounding. And obviously, we have to take care of the basketball. Up there, we had 19 turnovers, and anything below 20 (against UAA) is pretty solid."
 
(On putting up more points)
"The key is we just have to hit open shots. Anchorage is very tough defensively. But if we're able to find open shots, whether that's at the rim or the 3-point line, we just have to hit them."
 
AROUND THE WEST
Including the GNAC, all three West Region conferences are in tournament mode this week.
 
Cal State San Marcos (21-6, 18-4) is the top seed in the six-team California Collegiate Athletic Association Tournament at Cal State San Bernardino. The Cougars have a first-round bye, along with No. 2 seed Chico State (20-8, 16-6). San Marcos is on a three-game win streak and will await the winner of Thursday's first-round game between No. 4 Cal State Los Angeles (16-11, 13-9) and No. 5 Cal State San Bernardino (14-13, 12-10). Chico will take on the winner of No. 3 Cal Poly Pomona (19-8, 15-7) vs. No. 6 Sonoma State (16-13, 11-11). Based on last week's West Region rankings, No. 4 San Marcos and No. 5 Pomona are in solid position to make the NCAAs. Cal State L.A. (No; 7) and Chico (No. 8) are above the top-8 cutoff line, but might at least need to make the final to secure a bid. San Bernardino and Sonoma would need to win the whole thing.
 
Azusa Pacific (26-3, 20-0) is not only the favorite to win the Pacific West Conference Tournament, it also is the favorite to host the NCAA West Regionals. The Cougars have won 22 games in a row and will await Thursday's winner of No. 4 seed Dominican (19-9, 12-8) vs. No. 5 Concordia Irvine (13-13, 11-9). Fresno Pacific (20-8, 14-6) is the No. 2 seed and joins Azusa with a first-round bye. It will take on the winner of No. 3 Point Loma Nazarene (17-11, 13-7) vs. No. 6 Biola (15-13, 11-9). Point Loma is the tournament host. As the No. 1 team in last week's West rankings, Azusa is a cinch to make the eight-team West Regional. Point Loma is No. 6 and can enhance its chances with at least one win and likely secure a place by making Saturday's title game. The other four schools will have to win the tournament to reach the Regionals, as none of those four – even Fresno Pacific with its 20 victories – was in last week's West rankings.
 
UP NEXT: IF THE FALCONS WIN AND PLAY WWU
All-time series: WWU leads, 70-32.  Current series streak: WWU won 12.  Last time: WWU 66, SPU 55 (Feb. 24 at Seattle).  Last SPU series win: SPU 61, WWU 59 (Jan. 17, 2019 at Seattle).
In a nutshell: Western swept both games from SPU this year, 73-61 in Bellingham and 66-55 in Seattle. … Olivia Mayer and Layne Kearns had 16 points each at WWU, Brooke Walling led the Vikings with 20. … At SPU, Mayer led four Falcons players in double figures with 16 points plus seven rebounds. Lolo Weatherspoon added 11 points. Mason Oberg had 19, with all five of her field goals from downtown, and Walling added 17. … Those teams played in last year's semis, with WWU prevailing, 58-53.
 
 
GNAC FINAL STANDINGS
                                                          GNAC          Overall
Montana State Billings     16-2      25-5
Western Washington         14-4      21-6
Alaska Anchorage           13-5      18-8
Central Washington         10-8      18-11
Simon Fraser               10-8      17-13
Seattle Pacific             8-10     11-17
Northwest Nazarene          7-11      9-15
Saint Martin's              6-12      8-17
Western Oregon              3-15     10-13
Alaska Fairbanks            3-15      4-23


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