The University of Alaska Fairbanks    

Nanooks look to boost volleyball ranking

By RICHARD LARSON, Staff Writer

The midway point of the Great Northwest Athletic Conference season falls after this weekend's matches and the University of Alaska Fairbanks volleyball team's mission is to finish the first half of the conference season at 7-2. To do that, the Nanooks need to win tonight at Saint Martin's and Saturday at Central Washington.

"I think it is really important to be 7-2," said UAF coach Phil Shoemaker, whose team is currently 5-2 in the GNAC and 8-4 overall. "It's important not so much from deciding who is in second place, third place, fourth place in the league; that will sort itself out over the season. But if we are going to move on to the NCAA tournament, we need to have a strong conference record."

Four region teams--No. 1 UC San Diego, No. 3 Cal State San Bernardino, No. 4 Western Washington and No. 6 BYU-Hawaii--are ranked in the top six nationally. Only six teams make the regional playoffs.

"You can't just be one of the best teams in the region; you have to be one of the best in the nation," Shoemaker said.

The first NCAA Division II Pacific regional rankings for 2003 were released on Wednesday and if the season were to end today, the Nanooks would make the field. The regional rankings differ slightly from the order the Pacific teams are ranked nationally. Topping the regional rankings is UC San Diego (14-2). Western Washington (14-1) is second with Cal State San Bernardino (13-3) third. BYU-Hawaii (10-2) is fourth and Alaska Fairbanks (8-4) is fifth. Cal State Los Angeles (13-3) is ranked sixth. The Nanooks defeated Cal State Los Angeles earlier this season, but lost to two other regionally ranked teams in No. 7 Chaminade (7-4) and No. 9 Cal Poly Pomona (10-2) in the Pomona Invitational.

Hawaii Pacific (10-2) is ranked eighth and Alaska Anchorage (10-5) rounds out the top 10. Last year, Alaska Fairbanks finished 16-7 overall and 13-5 in the GNAC, but was left out of the regional tournament.

The Nanooks were inconsistent in their play much of the first half of the season, but last week put together two strong showings in a sweep of Seattle University and a four-game win over Northwest Nazarene.

"I really like what I'm seeing from an awful lot of players," Shoemaker said. "We played two good teams last week and we handled them with just one extra game over the course of the weekend. We had not been having success in winning the first games of matches, but we did it twice."

This week, the Nanooks face a Saint Martin's team that is winless in seven conference matches and is 5-13 overall and a Central Washington team that is 4-3, 5-10.

"Saint Martin's, they scare me. I'm not sure why yet, but they do," Shoemaker said. "We have had some matches against them in the past that have been much closer than they should be. Central Washington hits for one of the highest averages in the league. It seems like all our matches go the distance. They are all very close."

Despite Saint Martin's 0-7 GNAC record, Shoemaker said he didn't think his team would be looking past them to Central Washington. First, they would have to know who they are scheduled to play before they could look past anyone.

"I'll bet half of the team couldn't tell you who we play this weekend," Shoemaker said. "In a way, I kind of like that. They approach it that they are just going to line up and play and whoever is across the net is going to lose."