Published Mar 7, 2024 by Josh Reed

This season, the University of Alaska Anchorage men’s basketball team logged at least 20 wins for the 17th time since the program attained NCAA Division II status in 1977-78. But it hasn’t come easy and featured several challenges and obstacles along the way.

Now the Seawolves have a chance to contend for a Great Northwest Athletic Conference championship and are heading into this week’s regional tournament as perhaps the most dangerous team in the field despite being the lowest seed at No. 6.

“We’re ready to go win it and that’s our goal,” UAA head coach Rusty Osborne said Saturday. “We’ve beaten every team in the league except Seattle Pacific, and I don’t know if we’ll get a chance to see them or not, but it doesn’t matter. We know we can play with anybody when we’re on point offensively.”

It took until the final week of the regular season for the Seawolves to clinch a playoff berth, but they did so by defeating top-seeded Montana State Billings 84-78 in the finale.

Published Mar 7, 2024 by Josh Reed

The goal of many basketball programs in the country around this time of year is to peak and hit their stride heading into March when playoffs take place.

That is exactly what the University of Alaska Anchorage women’s basketball team has been doing over the last half of the season. The Seawolves, who have won 13 of their last 16 games in 2024 and the last four to close out the regular season, are heading into this week’s Great Northwest Athletic Conference championship tournament on a heater.

More impressive than the wins themselves are the opponents the Seawolves have faced and bested along the way. UAA notched a trio of victories over a pair of nationally ranked foes, including a sweep of conference power Western Washington and an overtime win over GNAC top-seeded Montana State Billings in the regular season finale this past Saturday.

UAA is the No. 3 seed in the GNAC tournament and will begin their pursuit of a championship on Thursday against No. 6-seeded Seattle Pacific, at 11 a.m. down in Ellensburg, Washington. The two teams split their regular-season series with the Falcons narrowly winning the first matchup 62-59 and the Seawolves winning the second 51-39.



Published Mar 6, 2024 by Gavin Struve

The University of Alaska Fairbanks hockey team will wrap its season with an unconventional Wednesday-Thursday home series against Stonehill this week. The second of the two games, both of which start at 7:07 p.m. at the Carlson Center, will serve as Senior Night for nine players.

This will be the first time the two teams face off in Fairbanks after meeting up for the first time ever earlier this season in Massachusetts in November. Those matchups resulted in a 3-1 win for UAF followed by an 8-1 win. Seven different Nanooks scored goals in the latter victory.

The ‘Nooks have rediscovered some momentum since a shutout home loss at the hands of Long Island University in mid-February. Since then, the Nanooks are 3-1-1 including a 4-0 win over LIU, a victory over No. 18 Arizona State in Fairbanks and a win at Augustana (SD), who beat them once in Fairbanks this season.

The Nanooks are not in the picture for the 16-team NCAA Ice Hockey Championship, which they narrowly missed out on last season. But UAF does appear primed to piece together consecutive winning seasons for the first time since 2013-14 and 2014-15.

UAF is celebrating nine seniors on Thursday who are each expected to be playing their final game at the Carlson Center. That group includes Arvils Bergmanis, Pierce Charleson, Chase Dubois, Harrison Israels, Matt Koethe, Brayden Nicholetts, Brady Risk, Anton Rubtsov and Jonny Sorenson.

Published Mar 6, 2024

The Kachemak Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve is hosting the 10th Kachemak Science Conference March 17-20 at Kachemak Bay Campus. The title of this year’s conference is “Cultivating Knowledge for Healthy Ecosystems & Communities.”

The conference will include five daytime presentation sessions organized by maritime theme. These include mariculture, monitoring, management, human dimensions and climate/transitional environmental responses. Evening events include a keynote address by Bretwood Higman with Ground Truth Alaska. His talk is called “Cassandra and the Tortoise: Geohazard Mitigation and Climate Uncertainty” and will take place on Sunday, March 17, starting at 5 p.m. Following the keynote, the upstairs of Alice’s Champagne Palace is reserved for socializing.