Another state tournament in the book

JEREMIAH BARTZ/ Frontiersman sports editor

ANCHORAGE - Another year, another state basketball tournament. With the 2006 Alaska Schools Activities Association state basketball tournaments now a part of the history book, here is a look back on five days of basketball action.

Yes, I said five days …

For the first time, ASAA combined all four classes into one giant event dubbed &#8220March Madness Alaska.” The new format, which had the 1A and 2A programs starting on Tuesday, and the 3A and 4A squads starting on Wednesday drew both criticism and praise. It was nice to see the small schools under the big spotlights of the Sullivan Arena. But making 4A schools such as Colony and Wasilla tip-off at 8 a.m. on a Wednesday is pretty goofy.

There were 64 teams playing 88 games in all over the course of five days.

Adjusting to

life at the Sully …

It doesn't take to long to figure out, playing on the hardwood of the Sullivan Arena is just a little bit different than taking the court of a high school gym. There's all of that extra space.

It's not the extra seats or the additional distance from the floor to the locker rooms that gets most players, it's the extra space behind the backboard.

&#8220It's so much different,” Colony senior Ryan Gray said. &#8220In all of the high schools there's maybe 10 feet between the backboard and the wall. But here at the Sullivan there's so much space.”

Gray and the Knights also had to make another fairly significant adjustment - playing at 8 a.m. Normally the average high school boys basketball squad takes the court for a game at about 7:30 p.m. On a Saturday teams might play in an afternoon matinee, but you'll never find an 8 a.m game on the regular season schedule. To prepare for that insanely early tip-off, the Colony coaching staff had the Knights in the gym at 5 a.m. the week of the tournament.

&#8220It was rough, but it paid off,” Gray said. &#8220I felt really good (Thursday) morning.”

Here we go again …

The Colony and Wasilla boys basketball programs seem to see a lot of each other. And it's not because the two schools are only separated by about 7 miles worth of Bogard Road.

The Knights and the Warriors met in the first round of the tourney. It marked the third meeting of the year, and the seventh in the last two seasons.

The Knights beat Wasilla 62-51 to move into the semifinals. It marked Colony's fifth win in the last seven games against the Warriors. The squads split the two-game regular season series. Last year Colony used a buzzer-beater to beat Wasilla in the Northern Lights Conference championship game, and two weeks later needed a pair of late free throws to edge the Warriors in the state semifinals.

Freshman phenoms …

Colony versus Wasilla in the 2009 4A girls state title game? Just look at the play of a couple of the Valley's finest freshman, and you can see it could happen.

Wasilla freshman guard Jenna Johnson established herself as one of the best players in the tournament averaging 15 points, seven rebounds and three assists in three games. She also shot 48 percent from the floor.

Colony freshman Allie Grazulis has shown the season that she will be battling Johnson for the rights to the NLC player of the year award for the next three years. Grazulis averaged 12 points and five rebounds per game in three contests.

Another Knight freshman, Kara Larson, was third in her class with 25 rebounds in three games.

And yet another Colony freshman, guard Jackie Hamman, showed the ability to hit some clutch baskets. Hamann hit three free throws when Colony really needed them - in the final seconds of a 53-49 win over Service in the fourth-place game. Hamann's free throws turned a one-point Colony lead into a win for the Knights.

You can look, but you can't touch …

Thanks former basketball standouts in Alaska such as Carlos Boozer, Mario Chalmers, Ray Schafer and Chandice Cronk, players in the 49th state are now getting noticed more often by coaches and scouts from college programs.

College scouts do have the tendency to lurk around the Sullivan during the state tournament in search of the net Chalmers or Cronk.

Rusty Osborne, head coach of the Alaska Anchorage men's basketball program, and Frank Ostanik, the head coach of the UAF men's squad, were on hand for much of the action. But with the tournament falling on the second to last week in March, coaches couldn't make contact with any of the players. NCAA rules prohibit college coaches from making direct contact with prep players until April 1. Among the Alaska players most likely to draw the Division I attention are West Anchorage senior Ramon Harris and Juneau-Douglas junior Talisa Rhea.

Last year the big recruiting news in Alaska was Chalmers signing with perineal power Kansas.

That's why they

play the games …

The Win Percentage Index (WPI) is the mathematical formula ASAA uses to seed the 4A tournaments. The 2006 4A tournaments prove exactly why you get the best results on the court, and not on paper.

Only one program's finish coincides exactly with its WPI ranking. West Anchorage was the top-ranked squad going into the tournament, and the final team standing once the event was over. Juneau-Douglas, the second-ranked team according to WPI was fourth in the tourney. The second-place team in the tourney, Chugiak, was eighth according to WPI.

On the girls' side, the outcome was very different than the WPI.

The WPI's top-ranked team, Juneau-Douglas, finished third. Second-seeded Wasilla was the Bears' opponent in the third-place game, and finished fifth. State champion Dimond entered the tournament with the bracket's fourth-best WPI. North Pole, the runner-up in the girls' tourney, was seventh according to

WPI.

So the lesson here boys and girls - the WPI, like any other system, is not exactly perfect.

But if everyone went by just the rating systems used at the prep or college level, the University of Connecticut men's basketball program would be in the Final Four, not George Mason.