Moose, Knights open state volleyball tourney with early matches

PALMER — Hopefully the Palmer Moose are morning people.

The Moose will hit the court Thursday at 8 a.m. to play Dimond in the first round of the ASAA/First National Bank 4A State Volleyball Championships at UAA.

Longtime Palmer head coach Steve Reynolds is not thrilled about the 8 a.m. draw.

“It’d definitely not an ideal time. But both teams have to play at the same time,” Reynolds said Monday.

But as far as his team’s first opponent, Cook Inlet runner-up Dimond, Reynolds adheres to a philosophy he’s had during his 15 years as Palmer’s head coach.

“It doesn’t matter at this point. Everybody is going to be good,” Reynolds said.

Dimond is a team with a ton of state championship experience. The Lynx won it all in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2012, and have not missed the title match since 2007. But as Reynolds has learned in his 14 trips to the state tourney in 15 years as head coach, he knows teams are in the state tourney for a reason.

“I think everybody there is going to be good,” Reynolds said. “You’ve got to be good to get into the tournament.”

Palmer, which won a Northern Lights Conference title last weekend, is making its sixth straight trip to the tournament. The Moose were third in both 2011 and 2012, and finished fifth last year.

Reynolds said the Moose have not had much opportunity to play teams from the CIC in 2014, other than regular-season tournament play. Palmer’s lone Anchorage opponent in a best-of-5 regular-season match was West, which did not quality. The Moose have not seen Dimond since the Chugiak Invitational early in the year.

“We know some things about Dimond and we are preparing for them,” Reynolds said.

Most of all, Reynolds said the Moose will concentrate on playing Palmer volleyball.

“We’re going to work on playing our own game,” Reynolds said. “We saw some of the better performances out of the team (during the NLC tournament). We saw some games, especially on Friday, when we were playing better than we had played.”

Colony, which also advanced to state with its third-place finish in the NLC tournament, is more familiar with its first-round foe. The Knights open tourney play against West Valley Thursday at 11:15 a.m. at UAA. Colony played the Wolfpack in a pair of regular-season matches, including a tough five-game loss to West Valley at CHS Oct. 23.

“We are familiar with how they play and what we need to work on to compete with them,” Colony head coach Amy Carter said by email Monday afternoon. “West Valley is a good team.”

The Wolfpack, the Mid-Alaska Conference champions, fared well against statewide opponents this season. West Valley was second in the West Spiketacular and third in the Dimond/Service Tournament.

Much like Palmer, Carter said the Knights are continuing to work on their game.

“We are still working on the consistency of play, so hopefully we’ll come together at state,” Carter said.

Southeast Conference champion Juneau-Douglas and East Anchorage, the CIC No. 3 seed, share the top half of the bracket with Palmer and Dimond, and play at 9:45 a.m. Thursday. CIC champion South Anchorage and NLC runner-up Kodiak are on the bottom side of the bracket with West Valley and Colony, and play Thursday at 1:15 p.m.

In addition to the four first-round matches, the double-elimination format also features two more winner’s bracket matches Thursday. The Palmer/Dimond winner meets the Juneau/East winner Thursday at 3 p.m. The West Valley/Colony winner and South/Kodiak winner play at 5 p.m.

A Palmer loss in the first round puts the Moose in the loser’s bracket, where they will play either Juneau or East Friday at 11 a.m. A Colony loss in the first round moves the Knights to the loser’s bracket where they would play either Kodiak or South Friday at 1 p.m.

With the double-elimination format, teams can still battle through the loser’s bracket back into the championship match.