By the time Galena basketball player Jenna Buchanan arrived on the UAA campus in 2012, the coach who had recruited her had abruptly left the school, leaving behind a winning legacy soon to be tainted by one of the biggest athletic scandals in school history.
The coach hired to replace him was in Anchorage for about as long as it takes Buchanan and her teammates to force a turnover these days. He left in an even bigger cloud of mystery than his predecessor, vanishing after a few days amid university claims of "professional misconduct."
The next person hired was a 29-year-old who had been born across the street from UAA at Providence Alaska Medical Center.
Ryan McCarthy was eager to make the ascent from assistant coach to head coach, and the chance of returning to his hometown to do so made him jump at the chance to take over as the UAA women's basketball coach -- even though his late-summer hiring gave him less than three months to prepare for his first season.
"I had three coaches before I even got to UAA," Buchanan said last week, "and I actually showed up on campus before Coach McCarthy did.
"It was definitely interesting. But I learned a lot my freshman year and built a lot of relationships. That and being close to home were part of the reason why I decided to stay.
"Coach McCarthy had a very good vision of what he wanted the program to be, so I was pretty excited for the years to come."
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That vision becomes reality Monday morning, when the Seawolves play for what would be the team's first NCAA Division II national championship. UAA (38-2) faces top-ranked and undefeated Lubbock Christian (34-0) at 11 a.m. Alaska time in the title game in Indianapolis, where the NCAA will crown all three of its women's champions this week.
Buchanan, who went on to become one of the school's greatest 3-pointer shooters, became part of a hastily constructed team in McCarthy's first season.
Only six players stayed at UAA when Tim Moser resigned as coach after six seasons and two Final Four appearances. McCarthy held open tryouts to fill out the roster.
"Four years ago I was standing in an intramural gym asking three players that had never played college basketball to be on the team so we could practice five-on-five, so we've come a long way," he said during the West Region tournament last month.
In McCarthy's first season, the Seawolves won seven of their final eight games to finish 17-10. The next year they were 19-9 with a first-round loss in the playoffs.
Then came a setback perpetrated by Moser. Shortly after McCarthy's second season ended, the NCAA dropped a bomb: Moser had paid more than $7,000 to two players during his final season at UAA.
Among the penalties were the loss of a partial scholarship, the forfeiture of 15 victories from the 2011-12 season and public reprimand and censure. The NCAA also placed the women's basketball team on probation for two years.
Fortunately for the Seawolves, the NCAA's punishment didn't include a postseason ban -- which, coupled with this season's remarkable run, puts them in the unusual position of playing for the national championship while still on probation. UAA gets off probation on May 1.
"When I got here it was a little bit of a mess," McCarthy understated last week. "It wasn't only restoring the program from a win-loss standpoint but restoring the image of the program and doing it the right way and making sure that everyone was pulling the rope in the same direction.
"I think we've done a good job with that."
From the mayhem created by previous coaches came the mayhem created by McCarthy's teams, which this season drew an average of 1,026 spectators for home games.
"Mayhem" is the UAA women's motto, a nod to the frenzied, relentless defense that has helped them go 103-23 in the last four seasons, including 67-4 the last two seasons.
This season's team includes seven seniors, including Buchanan and Jessica Madison, the only leftovers from the Moser era – Madison was a redshirt during Moser's final season.
After getting through his first season, McCarthy demonstrated deft recruiting skills.
Two of his first two recruits were Alysha Devine of Wasilla and Kiki Robertson of Hawaii, a pair of juniors who will both start on Monday. McCarthy began recruiting Robertson when he was an assistant coach at Northwest Nazarene – his alma mater – and he continued to pursue her when he moved to Anchorage.
One of his biggest coups was landing Adriana Dent, a junior college All-American with tremendous defensive and ball-handling skills.
Once Dent said yes to UAA, so did two more top junior college players, Keke Wright and Christina Davis. Wright completed her career last season, but Davis, who took a redshirt season, is part of a strong bench that lets UAA come at teams in waves.
"We're the reinforcements," Davis said.
After his second season, McCarthy landed Megan Mullings, a third-team All-America player this season. And he has landed his share of Alaskans – Sierra Afoa, Hannah Wandersee and Tara Thompson, along with Buchanan and Devine.
He was also lucky enough to get Keiahnna Engel, who decided to come home for her final season after four seasons, including a redshirt year, at Division I Boise State. Though troubled by knee injuries, Engel is often the best athlete on the court and a perfect fit for UAA's swarming style of play.
The Seawolves moved into the new Alaska Airlines Center at the start of the 2014-15 school year. They spent part of the season as the top-ranked team in Division II and hosted the West Region tournament, only to suffer a stunning first-round upset.
The sting of that defeat didn't go away. All of the seniors stayed in Anchorage last summer to work out together.
"It's the accumulation of what we began to build four years ago," McCarthy said of the team's journey to the national championship game.
"I don't know if there's any magical potion as far as what we did last year and losing in the first round and what we did this year. I think that's just part of the growing and maturing process when you take over a program and have to build it back to where in your mind it could be.
"This was the first year where we talked about winning the national championship from Day One. Maybe that was naïve on my part, but I never thought (before), 'Man, I think we're the best team in the country,' but this year I really believe it. I really believed it, and more important, the girls believed it.
"This is what we sell in the recruiting -- if you come here and take care of business, people are really gonna care. You're the main show. For women's basketball, this is as good as it gets."