Change of plans

PALMER — Curve balls are usually reserved for the baseball diamond and not the basketball court. But last week, the Colony Knights were tossed a curve ball.

After originally being paired against the Lathrop Malemutes in the first round of the ASAA First National Bank 4A State Basketball Championships girls’ bracket, the second-seeded Knights will now face Dimond in the first round of the tourney, Thursday at 11:20 a.m. at West Anchorage High School.

ASAA released the first edition of the bracket on March 9, but after being notified of an error in the Win Percentage Index — the formula used to seed the 4A teams — the bracket was revised.

“It caught me a little off guard,” said Colony head coach Don Witzel, who was notified of the change on March 11.

Lathrop, the Mid-Alaska Conference champion, was initially the seventh seed in the 2008 state tourney, while Dimond, the third-place squad from the Cook Inlet Conference, was the eighth seed. Witzel said one of Lathrop’s games, a loss to Wasilla during the Joe Floyd Tournament at Kodiak High School in December, was not recorded and factored into the Malemutes’ WPI. Once that game was included into the total, Dimond moved ahead of Lathrop in the WPI.

The Lynx are now at 54.5, while the Malemutes are at 53.3.

Lathrop now plays top-seed Chugiak at 8:30 p.m. on Thursday.

Colony did not play either team during the regular season, and Witzel said the Knights hadn’t had the chance to do much game-planning before the change.

The Knights did play Lathrop last season, and Witzel had already reviewed the video from that game.

“We were in the process of laying out some things,” Witzel said. “It wasn’t that disruptive. In terms of familiarity, we are a little more familiar with Lathrop.”

Witzel does know the Lynx are a guard-oriented team who have scored some big victories in the last two months.

On Feb. 29, the Lynx upset Chugiak 57-22. Last week, Dimond beat Service and East en route to a third-place finish in the CIC tourney.

Colony is on the same side of the bracket as South Anchorage and Palmer. The third-seeded Wolverines face the sixth-seeded Moose at 6:50 p.m. on Thursday, with the winner moving on to face the winner of the Colony-Dimond game.

“It’s a pretty good side of the bracket,” Witzel said. “[South is] big. I think we match up pretty well against them. Palmer’s played pretty well down the stretch.”

This tournament has a lot of parity,” Witzel said. “It could be anybody’s tournament.”

The Colony-Dimond quarterfinal will be the first meeting of the year for those two programs, but the two other games involving Valley squads will be rematches.

South and Palmer played in early February, with the Wolverines posting a 51-45 win over the Moose at South Anchorage High School.

“It’s an interesting matchup,” Palmer head coach Paul Reid said of the quarterfinal. “We’re a bit different. They’re not real guard heavy, and as big of team as you’re going to see in the state.”

In the regular season nonconference match, Reid said the Moose played well for about three quarters, and neither team held more than about a six-point lead throughout the game.

As far as a game plan, Reid said the Moose have an emphasis on defense and will focus on keeping South senior Sylvia Bullock — an all-state forward who has already committed to play college basketball at Miami (Fla.) — off the boards.

“There’s not a lot of secrets out there really,” Reid said.

On the other side of the bracket, fourth-seeded Juneau-Douglas plays fifth-seeded Wasilla in a rematch of the 2007 state title game at 1 p.m. on Thursday. The winner of that game will face the winner of the Chugiak-Lathrop quarterfinal.

The Warriors and Crimson Bears boast one of the better nonconfernce rivalries in the state. Wasilla won the 2007 state title with a 51-48 win over the Bears last year.

The teams also played during the regular season, with Juneau claiming a 45-36 win over the Warriors at Wasilla High School in mid-February. “I told the kids and they’re excited,” Fullmer said. “They’re excited to be in the tournament.”

But Fullmer also stressed the Moose are not satisfied with just being in the tournament.

“The guys want to play them,” Fullmer said. “The guys are grateful to be going, but they don’t want to just be there. They want to make some noise and do some damage.”

The Colony Knights are the No. 1 seed on the boys’ bracket and will face eighth-seeded Palmer at 5:10 p.m. Thursday at West High.

After finishing 3-7 in Northern Lights Conference play during the regular season, the Moose scored three wins and a third-place finish during the NLC tourney to launch them into the state tourney for the second straight year.

Colony swept Palmer in a pair of regular season meetings, but Colony head coach Jeff Bowker said the Knights certainly won’t look past the Moose.

“No doubt, we won’t overlook Palmer. Palmer had us on the ropes the second to last game of the season,” Bowker said last week, referring to Colony’s 69-59 win over PHS on Feb. 29. “They beat Wasilla, they beat Kodiak. They’ve got good players over there.”

Palmer scored back-to-back wins over Kodiak and Wasilla on the final day of the conference tourney to earn its state championships bid. Wasilla and Kodiak had also beat Palmer twice during the regular season.

The Moose had originally hoped to slide into the seventh spot at the state tourney.

“(Lathrop) beat us by a point,” Fullmer said last week. “But it’s ok.”

The Malemutes have a WPI rating of 48.44, while Palmer is at 47.40.

Regardless, after seeing the bracket, Fullmer said his players are ready for the challenge of facing the state’s top team.

Contact Frontiersman sports editor Jeremiah Bartz at sports@frontiersman.com.