Monday, February 27, 2017

PORTLAND, Ore. – In the GNAC, March Madness begins on Thursday with 10 of the conference’s 11 schools represented in the men’s and women’s basketball championships, and GNAC Insider got prepared for the madness on Tuesday night at 7 p.m. (Pacific). Alaska Anchorage women’s basketball head coach Ryan McCarthy, Concordia men’s basketball guard Latrell Wilson and Central Washington women’s basketball guard Sarah McGee all joined the show hosted by Rob Lowery.

McCarthy joined the program after leading the Seawolves to a third consecutive GNAC regular season title and the first undefeated conference season in program history. In his fifth year at Alaska Anchorage, his hometown college’s women’s basketball team has gone 130-25 under his tutelage. The Seawolves are riding a program-record 23-game winning streak into the GNAC Championships, where they are the No. 1 seed and will play the winner of Seattle Pacific and Northwest Nazarene on Friday. The streak is the fourth longest in GNAC history and the best in nine years.

Wilson helped lead the Cavaliers on a late run to qualification for the GNAC Championships, winning their last four games to clinch a playoff spot on the last day of the regular season. The run started with a 68-67 overtime win against Alaska Anchorage in which Wilson hit a buzzer-beating 3-pointer to send the game into overtime. The theatrics continued two nights later when Wilson made eight points in the final 200 seconds of a 77-75 win against Alaska. The Cavaliers pulled off another narrow upset with a 69-67 win against No. 3 seed Western Oregon last week. Then in the regular season finale, Concordia beat Montana State Billings with a buzzer-beating tip-in for a 79-77 win that proved to be enough to secure a playoff spot. The Cavaliers will face No. 4 seed and host Saint Martin’s on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. (Pacific).

McGee helped the Wildcats reach the GNAC Championships for the third year in a row as the No. 6 seed in the tournament. With just over three weeks left in the season, Central Washington found itself with a 3-10 record and four games behind the Alaska Nanooks in the standings. The Wildcats, however, went on to win six of their final seven games with the only loss coming to undefeated Alaska Anchorage. That included two overtime victories, which proved to be just enough to earn qualification into the conference tournament. The Wildcats will play on Thursday at noon against Simon Fraser, which was the team that CWU defeated in overtime to begin the run.