It was a little like Harry Potter conquering the Hungarian Horntail. The UAA men's basketball team, always the underdog at the Great Alaska Shootout, took down a Division I Dragon on Friday, outdueling the bigger Drexel Dragons 71-65 in a physical battle at the Alaska Airlines Center.
The win puts the Seawolves in Saturday's 2 p.m. fourth-place game against San Jose State. The Seawolves are 37-76 all-time in the tournament that features seven Division I teams plus the Division II UAA; in six of the previous 37 Shootouts, they have won two games to finish in fourth place.
"Our ultimate goal is to get three wins but we just want this next one," said Christian Leckband, a senior from Nome who will play his final Shootout game Saturday. "I think we can do it."
Leckband wore a bag of ice on his left elbow after the game, the result of taking two charges that sent him to the floor.
"Right place, right time," he said of the charges, one of which came with the game on the line.
UAA guard Suki Wiggs scored 33 points -- he's got 68 in two games -- and forward Corey Hammell supplied a double-double of 14 points and 12 rebounds while battling against Drexel's big, strong post players.
The Dragons inflicted pain not by breathing fire but by blocking shots, crashing the boards and swarming Hammell -- a 6-foot-6 forward who gave up a couple of inches to his interior counterparts -- every time he went to work under the basket. They blocked nine shots and outrebounded the Seawolves 49-38.
"They've got some big boys on that team," Hammell said. "They definitely like to battle down in the post."
Leckband added 11 points but his biggest contribution may have been the two straight fouls he drew in the waning minutes, when it was still anybody's game.
Both times he was fouled by Rodney Williams, the Drexel forward who had 15 pounds on the 6-7, 210-pound Leckband. The first came with 3 minutes, 23 seconds left and UAA protecting a 65-61 lead. It was an offensive foul, the fourth foul of the game for Williams, and it cost Drexel the ball.
On UAA's ensuing possession, Williams fouled Leckband again for his fifth and game-disqualifying foul. Williams left with 10 rebounds, nine points and three blocks, and Leckband went to the line for two free throws that upped UAA's lead to 67-61 with three minutes to go.
At the 2:03 mark, Hammell drew a foul from Rashann London and sank both free throws for an eight-point UAA lead.
Drexel got a quick jumper from Tavon Allen and rebounded a miss by Wiggs and scored again on a layup by London to make it 69-65 with a minute left. London blocked a shot by Wiggs and Drexel got one final possession, but Allen came up empty on three attempts before Diante Mitchell grabbed a defensive rebound for the Seawolves.
London's fifth foul put Mitchell at the line, where he made both shots to cement the victory.
"I thought the game came down to foul shots," Drexel coach Bruiser Flint said. "They made their foul shots and we didn't."
UAA hit 22 of 30 free throws, with Hammell draining 12 of 16, and Drexel was 11 of 22, with Williams hitting 5 of 7. The Dragons lost two players to fouls and had two others playing with four at game's end. Hammell played the final five minutes with four fouls and Leckband also finished with four.
Drexel (0-5) got a big boost from its bench. Tyshawn Myles, a 260-pound sophomore, grabbed nine rebounds and blocked three shots, and Sammy Mojica, a sophomore guard, scored 20 points and twice helped spark Drexel runs that wiped out UAA leads.
After racing to leads of 10-0 and 22-11, UAA hit a dry spell midway through the first half. Mojica scored seven points for the Dragons in a 12-1 run that tied the game, 23-23. The half ended with UAA on top 40-36.
In the second half, Wiggs and Leckband buried 3-pointers to help UAA built a 48-41 lead that Drexel erased with a 9-0 run. The 50-48 lead was the biggest of the game for Dragons; after that, the teams traded the lead five times before UAA pulled away with free throws and a 3-pointer by Wiggs.
Wiggs, who scored 35 in a 75-72 Thursday loss to Middle Tennessee State, didn't show the pinpoint accuracy of the night before but he was dangerous all the same. He hit 11 of 27 shots, including 7 of 17 from 3-point range.
"Suki's a great scorer. He's proven that," said Hammell, who sufferered through 1-of-9 shooting. "The rest of us, there'll be days when we're not scoring. If I'm not scoring, I like to crash the boards and maybe go to the line."
UAA shot poorly -- 19 of 63 -- but players like Hammell and Leckband made up for their misses by working hard at other things.
"It was a very good physical effort," UAA coach Rusty Osborne said. "The first 12 minutes we played about as well as we can play defensively.
"We didn't play very well today, but we played extremely hard. ... It gives us a little more confidence when you can play poorly and still win a basketball game."