Warriors enter tourney as top seed

MAT-SU — Ryan Engebretsen is thrilled that his Wasilla Warriors made it through the regular season without a blemish on their conference record. But Engebretsen also knows that a perfect record won’t mean anything if the Warriors don’t put together a few wins during the conference tournament.

“It was nice to finish out the regular season 10-0 in our conference, but we know there’s plenty of teams vying for those top three spots,” Engebretsen said of the Warriors, who open Northern Lights Conference Championships play against the Skyview Panthers Thursday at 8:15 p.m. at Skyview High School. “The regular season at this point doesn’t matter. You have to be in the top three, otherwise the regular season is all for not.”

The top three teams from the tournament will advance to the 4A state championship tourney, which is slated for March 15-17 at the Sullivan Arena in Anchorage. Wasilla intends to be part of that group, but the Warriors wouldn’t mind defending their NLC title either.

“Our goal is to win three games,” Engebretsen said.

Engebretsen said he’s pleased with how his squad is playing as the team prepares for the conference tourney.

“We’re doing the right things, trying to make things happen, playing well as a group,” Engebretsen said. “All 12 guys have a ton of confidence in themselves and each other.”

Wasilla will play either Kenai (4-6) or Palmer (5-5) on Friday.

The Moose may be at .500 in conference play, but Palmer is coming off arguably its biggest win of the season, a 57-47 victory over Colony at Colony High School last Friday.

“It couldn’t have happened at a better time,” Palmer senior captain Brennan Bohman said after the win over Colony. “Now we can go into regions with some momentum. We’re feeling good, we’re feeling confident. That was a huge win for us. We really needed that win.”

The win over Colony also pushed Palmer past Kodiak (4-6) and into the No. 3 seed from the NLC North. Kenai is seeded second out of the South. Palmer beat Kenai during a regular-season meeting in Kenai in January.

Colony (7-3), the NLC North’s second seed, will face third-seeded Homer at 9:45 a.m. Thursday. All three of Colony’s conference losses this season came to Valley rivals. Colony was 0-2 against Wasilla, and 1-1 versus Palmer. The Knights finished a perfect 4-0 against teams from the South Division and swept a two-game series with Kodiak.

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