Jan. 12, 2008

Alaska vs. UAA Game Notes

• Tonight's opponents are certainly no strangers to one another. Since the first season of Anchorage basketball began in 1977, the two teams have played each other a total of 87 times: the most the Nanooks have faced any single team. Anchorage leads the all-time series by a 28-59 mark, though over the past five years the series is an even 5-5.

• The Nanooks will be looking to play the role of spoiler tonight, as they hope to knock the Seawolves back out of the national rankings. Anchorage cracked the Division II Top 25 coaches' poll this week, getting enough votes to secure the No. 19 spot in the latest poll.

• Tonight's matchup will feature two of the Great Northwest Athletic Confer-ence's top scorers: one for each side. UAA senior Carl Arts currently sits third on the scoring list, averaging 17.9 ppg, while Alaska's Kevin Atkins is in a tie for fifth-place, averaging 15.5 points every outing.

• Alaska took home sixth place at this year's BP Top of the World Classic tou-ranment, held in Fairbanks on Nov. 15-18. The Nanooks went 1-2 for the tournament, including a shock 62-60 win over Division I Oregon State, where they staged an improbable comeback to pull off a historic upset after trailing 53-46 with just six minutes to go.

• A resurgent Mike Titus seems to have put the illnesses that hampered the early part of his season behind him, scoring 30 points and pulling down 14 rebounds in the Nanooks two confer-ence contests last week. The senior co-captain now has 624 total points for his four-year Alaska career, moving him into the school's all-time top 50 scorers. He currently sits in 46th place, just below Bob Clarke, who scored 656 points for the Nanooks between 1973-74.

• The Nanooks broke a six-game losing streak, grabbing their first conference win in the process, when they knocked off Western Oregon on the road last Saturday, 85-79. Alaska got a career-high 17 points from Keven Campbell, including a vital three-point play that keyed the team's fightback from a four- point deficit with just four minutes to play.

• Kevin Atkins, who played in just 11 games last year, has been a revelation for the Nanooks this season. The Long Beach native has led the team in scor-ing in six of the team's 11 games, in-cluding the last four consecutive con-tests. Atkins currently sits second in the conference in rebounding, pulling in 8.2 per game, and has three double-doubles for the Nanooks this season, his last coming against UC San Diego on Dec. 6 (17 pts, 10 rbs).