Late 3 lifts Seattle Pacific over Central at GNAC

Before the final second of the game, Will Parker was a non-scoring role player in Seattle Pacific’s matchup against Central Washington in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference tournament at Saint Martin’s University’s Marcus Pavilion.

In that final second, however, Parker, a

5-foot-10 junior from Sammamish, nailed a fall-back 3-pointer under pressure from the right wing for his only basket. All it did was win the game.

Parker took a pass from Bryce Leavitt with scarcely time to square up, and and launched a high-arcing shot that dropped through for a 68-65 Falcons lead that broke the seventh tie of the second half, leaving 0.6 seconds on the game clock. A technical free throw padded the score in a 69-65 victory Thursday for the fourth-seeded Falcons against the Wildcats, the fifth seed.

Parker said he’s played long enough with Leavitt to not be surprised when a drive to the hoop results in a kick-out pass behind the arc.

“I like taking that shot,” said Parker, who played 27 minutes with a sore right index finger he re-injured last week. He took only one other shot before his game-winner.

Seattle Pacific (22-7) moves on to a semifinal game at 2:15 p.m. today against top-seeded Western Oregon.

Central finished its season 18-8.

Earlier, two free throws by 7-footer Gilles Dierickx gave the Falcons a 61-59 lead with 2:43 on the clock. Joseph Stroud, a 6-8 senior from Seattle’s Rainier Beach, who led Central’s scoring with 19 points, tied it up again on an alley-oop dunk off a pass by Gary Jacobs.

Mitch Penner, who scored 15 of his game-high 25 points in the second half, scored the next four points for SPU to earn a 65-63 lead. Devin Matthews (12 points) knotted it again for the Wildcats on a putback with 29.1 seconds left.

After a timeout, the ball landed in Parker’s hands, and he knew what to do with it.

Central twice built first-half leads of nine points, the last at 21-12, before Penner fueled an SPU comeback. A three-pointer by Penner, a 6-5 senior from Seattle and Kennedy Catholic High, gave the Falcons their first lead since the game’s opening minutes at 28-27.

From that point, the lead changed hands 14 times. The biggest lead of the second half was eight points, built by the Falcons at 51-43 midway through the half. A 14-5 Central run, capped by a single free throw by Naim Ladd (11 points) earned the Wildcats their last outright lead of the game at 57-56.

Before the game’s final sequence, Looney removed Dierickx (10 first-half points, 13 overall) from the game and instructed his team to spread the floor, with an eye on neutralizing shot-blocker Stroud.

“Against another good team, we just had one more basket,” said SPU coach Ryan Looney, whose team is looking for a fourth consecutive GNAC tournament title.

“I don’t have a player on the roster who’s ever lost a game in this tournament.”

Leavitt, a 6-4 senior from Kennewick, scored 14 points for Seattle Pacific.

Dierickx, whose college basketball path has taken him from Ghent, Belgium, through Chaminade, Florida International and the University of Washington (where he earned a communications degree) to a final year at SPU, said the Falcons went through a touch stretch in January before righting themselves.

“It’s really coming together for us,” he said. “It’s the right time to be playing well.”

Western Washington 78, Alaska Anchorage 73: The sixth-seeded Vikings earned an upset of the third-seeded Seawolves, Western’s first win over Alaska Anchorage in three tries this season.

Western held off a late Anchorage comeback to advance to a noon game today against No. 2 seed Alaska Fairbanks.

The Vikings (16-14) got a game-high 31 points from junior forward Jeffrey Parker and an 11-point, 12-rebound effort from senior forward Kyle Impero, both of whom played all 40 minutes.

Junior guard Suki Wiggs led an Alaska Anchorage comeback and led his team with 20 points and 12 rebounds.

The Vikings built a 73-65 lead, and though the Seawolves got it to 75-73 game on Wiggs’s fast-break feed to Christian Leckband with 25 seconds to play, they couldn’t close the gap.

Senior guard Ricardo Maxwell contributed 18 points and six assists for Western.

WOMEN

Montana State-Billings 70, Northwest Nazarene 65: Alisha Breen scored 17 of her 24 points in the second half to lead the Yellowjackets to a comeback victory.

Montana State-Billings trailed by four entering the fourth quarter. Breen scored her team’s first 10 points to give the Yellowjackets the lead, 55-54, with 5:41 to play. The Crusaders would not lead again.

Northwest Nazarene led, 34-29, at the half thanks to Taylor Simmons and some hot shooting. Simmon, who made all six of her shots before halftime, had 12 of her 20 points in the opening half as the Crusaders made 55.6 percent of their field goal attempts.

That changed in the second half. Northwest Nazarene slumped to 29.7 percent and did not make a basket for more than six minutes in the fourth quarter.

The Yellowjackets also got a big night from Janiel Olson, who recorded a double-double with 14 points and 17 rebounds.

Simon Fraser 78, Central Washington 67: Elisa Homer made her only two 3-pointers to fuel an 8-0 run in the fourth quarter to help the Clan pull away and survive a big night by the Wildcats’ Jasmine Parker, who scored 25 points.

Homer, who had 14 points, led a charge that turned a two-point game into a 63-53 lead with about five minutes to play. Central never got closer than four points the rest of the way.

Alisha Roberts led the Clan with 18 points.

This story was originally published March 3, 2016 at 9:53 PM with the headline "Late 3 lifts Seattle Pacific over Central at GNAC."