Saturday, March 2, 2024
by Evan O'Kelly, Assistant Commissioner For Communications

PORTLAND, Ore. – The field is officially set for the 2024 GNAC Men’s Basketball Championships Presented by Under Armour and hosted by Central Washington University, as the regular season came to a conclusion on Saturday night.

Tickets for the 2024 GNAC Men’s Basketball Championships are available online at www.gnactickets.com. Tournament passes, good for all men’s and women’s games, are $60 for adults and $40 for students, children and seniors. Individual session prices, which include two games per session, are $15 for adults and $11 for students, children and seniors.

All games of the 2024 GNAC Basketball Championships will be streamed live free of charge at GNAC.tv, and will be broadcasted by Shawn Walli and Dustin Daniel. Live stats for all games of the men’s tournament will be available online here.

Thursday’s first quarterfinal matchup at 5:15 p.m. (PT) pits the No. 3 seed Saints (21-7, 11-7 GNAC) against the No. 6 seed Seawolves (20-9, 10-8), with UAA claiming both the regular-season meetings between the teams. UAA knocked off last year’s regular-season champion 71-68 in Anchorage on Jan. 27, before completing the season sweep with an 80-79 nailbiter two weeks ago in Lacey. SMU will be on the hunt both for a vengeful victory as well as its first-ever conference tournament trophy, as the Saints advance to the GNAC Championships for the third year in a row and the ninth time overall. Alaska Anchorage meanwhile made the tournament for the 11th time, which tied Western Oregon for the second-most among the conference’s 10 teams. UAA’s one conference tournament trophy came at the inaugural event in 2011.

No GNAC team was better at home this season than tournament host No. 4 seed Central Washington (18-9, 11-7), which will look to parlay its 13-1 record inside Nicholson Pavilion in Thursday night’s primetime matchup against No. 5 seed Seattle Pacific (17-14, 10-8). The Falcons are the hottest team in the GNAC, entering their GNAC-record 12th tournament on the heels of four consecutive victories. SPU’s four GNAC Championships trophies are the most of any team in the conference, with SPU winning three straight from 2013-15 and last claiming the tournament crown in 2019. SPU has advanced to six GNAC Championships in a row.

Like the other quarterfinal matchup, SPU and CWU split their regular-season meetings with the Wildcats winning 73-66 in Ellensburg on Jan. 6 and the Falcons returning the favor 77-75 at Brougham Pavilion in Seattle on Feb. 1. The duo are no strangers at the GNAC Championships, with SPU holding a 2-1 all-time record over CWU in the event. The last time the teams met in the postseason was a 69-65 win by the Falcons in the quarterfinals of the 2016 GNAC Championships.

Awaiting the winner of the first quarterfinal game will be regular-season runner-up Northwest Nazarene (17-9, 13-5), which earned its first-round bye with a 68-59 overtime win over Saint Martin’s on Saturday evening. The Nighthawks took home their first-ever GNAC Championships trophy last winter, upsetting their way through the 2023 tournament field as the No. 6 seed to mark just the second time since the tournament’s inception that the lowest seed emerged the victor. NNU grabbed both games from Alaska Anchorage in the regular season, while it split its two contests against Alaska Anchorage.

Montana State Billings (20-8, 14-4) had just one GNAC men’s basketball trophy featured in the display case outside of Alterowitz Gym – from the 2012 GNAC Championships – before winning its first-ever GNAC regular-season title on Thursday with an 81-58 triumph over Alaska. The Yellowjackets made it to the conference tournament for the third year in a row and the ninth time overall, and earned a first-round bye for just the second time along with last year’s No. 2 seed. The Yellowjackets were the only team to beat CWU on its home floor this season, as they swept the Wildcats in the regular season. MSUB split its regular-season games with SPU, topping the Falcons 81-75 on Jan. 27 in Billings before a 91-80 loss on Feb. 24 in Seattle.

The winner of the GNAC Championships will receive the conference’s automatic berth to the NCAA Division II West Region Championships.