Great Alaska Shootout, Day 1 Report

This weekend, Anchorage hosts the Great Alaska Shootout, consisting of 16 games of basketball in 5 days.

Before I get to that, I heard that Purdue was perhaps beaten by a fairly good Miami team! Ha!

Yesterday, we had two women's preliminary games, neither was particularly spectacular (of course what can one expect from early season?). ADN has excellent coverage for those of you who want to know the technical details, but I've added some "supplemental coverage" of my own.

Game 1: University of AK-Anchorage (hometown school) Seawolves vs. Louisiana-Lafayette Ragin' Cajuns

I think we got to the arena about 5 minutes into the first game. The Seawolves were already behind I believe at that point. I was suprised to see a smiley mouth in on the new basketball floor under the basketball hoops. Frank explained that this was some new line to help with calling charges and things. I thought perhaps they were trying to make the floor more pleasant :).

The Seawolves, which the program lists as a mascot based on a mythical sea creature that was lucky if you could see it (tm), are having a rebuilding year. They lost nine out of twelve players last year. Some of the interesting players include a slow-footed center and another "black hole of basketball". A "black hole" is a person who once they get the ball, never gives it back up even under serious pressure. This and the fact that they could not transition very well had to be the biggest problems of the team.

The Cajuns, on the other hand, played an uninspired but less-sucky game of basketball to win the game. Once it was obvious they were going to win, their second string went in. They had an enthusiastic second string center, who was sprinting down the court, running even her own players down. I thought she did a great job.

Anyways, so ho-hum, the Cajuns won by a lot.

So, enough about the game, what else was going on??

As someone who drifts during long basketball games, I always find time to critique the courtside entertainment. For the Great Alaska Shootout, teams do not send their cheerleaders, so Anchorage High schools sponsor a team and provide cheerleaders and entertainment. This makes things interesting, as squads must create uniforms for themselves and create cheers for their teams that they don't really have a connection to. This makes for a kind of self-absorbed cheering section, who seems more interested in what the next cheer is and being self-conscious than actually cheering for the teams. What really made me sad though is that these girls put so much effort into their floor routines and "spirit finger" expressions, and the spectators were just not going along. There is very little sadder to me than silence after a "when I say red, you say white, -- RED!" shout. To make it more dramatic, they were doing really great basket tosses (things that can't be done in many states at a high school level anymore), flips, and all sorts of stuff. So I had to at least clap and pay attention to them, because they were cheering their hearts out.

Other than that, we had a dance team from one of the high schools come on. Frank's comment sums it up "a nice compilation of bad music from every generation". Other than the music, I did think though that they were very synchronized, and I doubt many spectators could do any of those moves. They even had the "cocked-wrist", stylted dance style down that is so popular in college dance groups.

We also had the pep band from Grace Christian there, which was very typical of a small-school pep band. We had a very loud and enthusiastic drummer combined with a brass section with at least one horn that was playing their own tune. They played your normal band songs like "James Bond" as well as interesting choices like "Malaguena" and the theme from Super Mario. I don't know what is scarier -- that I recognized the tune of an old Nintendo game or that they were playing it! What's next, "Legend of Zelda"?

All in all, good entertainment, and I mean even the pep band. I look forward to seeing the kids tonight when ESPN2 is covering them!

Game 2: Stanford vs. Eastern Washington

I was conflicted about this game, since Stanford has an Anchorage-grown star while Eastern is at least in our conference. I decided not to decide, since I would probably root for whomever was losing anyways.

Soon it was pretty apparent that Stanford was going to win, so I started watching for interesting players. On Eastern Washington, there was an overly enthusiastic guard that liked to try to organize things. However, gesturing to teammates on where one is going to pass the ball is perhaps a bad idea, as well as charging into the lane when everyone else is hanging out there also. Stanford had a center who is really good but her knee bends back funny so I was worried for her.

Anyways, we watched the cheerleaders do another participatory cheer, then left relatively early with the other folks.

Tonight, we have the champ game for the women's tourney, plus UAA vs Alabama (remember, the mythical sea creatures lost to Grand Canyon State a week ago, so perhaps this will not be a good game). The other men's game will be Furman and Minnessota.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!