Anchorage Daily News

The owner of the fledgling Alaska Dream professional basketball team expects as many as 200 players will show up at the Cellular One Sports Complex on Sunday, aiming to impress coaches and eventually earn a spot on the team that begins play this winter.

Registration starts at 2 p.m., and the action runs 4-7 p.m. Tryout fees start at $100.

"Basically we're looking for players that have that hunger and physical ability and aggression to play at the next level," owner Trey Davis said.

Head coach Al Sokaitis, the former UAF men's coach, said he has "no idea" how many will show up, but he's already heard from a number of former UAF and UAA players -- including graduated seniors Carl Arts and McCade Olsen of UAA and Andrew Smith and Justin Bourne of UAF.

One name local basketball -- and sofa -- fans will recognize is Buddy Bailey, the former UAA player and frequent TV pitchman for his family's business, Bailey's Home Furnishings.

"I'm really excited about it," Bailey said Friday. "There are a lot of basketball families and basketball people up here, and I know how great it is playing in front of the hometown crowd.

"You know how it is: Once an athlete, always a competitor."

Sokaitis said the American Basketball Association emphasizes speed -- teams earn an extra point for converting a backcourt turnover -- and players must be particularly quick to succeed.

"It puts a premium on being able to take care of the ball and a premium stealing the ball," he said. "Players have to be faster and more athletic than the collegiate game.

"People don't understand how athletic it is."

Sunday's most impressive players will be invited back for further tryouts in the beginning of September. Play in the ABA begins in December.

Between now and then, Sokaitis will attend several tryout camps throughout the West Coast. He'll also target players who participated in NBA summer leagues but weren't invited to teams' preseason camps.

"We'll just see who's available in the area and move on from there," he said.

Sokaitis, 56, guided the Nanooks men for eight seasons (1996-2004). His 108-111 coaching record includes a 43-15 mark in his last two seasons, when UAF earned back-to-back appearances in the NCAA Division II Tournament for the first time in the program's history.

One of the biggest highlights of his tenure was a victory over Weber State in the final of the 2002 Top of the World Classic at the Carlson Center, marking the first time in NCAA men's basketball history that a Division II team captured the championship of an eight-team Division I tournament.

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