After rough start, UAA men get another tuneup this weekend

With just one player back from last season, the UAA men's basketball team is very much a work in progress three games into the season.

The Seawolves lost a pair of games over the weekend in the Alaska/Hawaii Challenge, falling to Hawaii Pacific 65-51 on Friday and Chaminade 71-65 on Saturday.

The team has two more games – Friday and Saturday against Holy Names University of Oakland, California — to get ready for the GCI Great Alaska Shootout. The Seawolves are 1-2 heading into the Holy Names series, with their lone victory a one-point win over Antelope Valley of the NAIA.

UAA saw some improvement from Friday to Saturday. The Seawolves shot 26.6 percent (17 of 64) on Friday and were particularly brutal in the second half, when they hit 6 of 36 shots (16.7 percent). On Saturday, they shot 39.7 percent (23 of 58).

In the first game, during which the Seawolves endured a nine-minute scoreless stretch, "the wheels fell off offensively," coach Rusty Osborne said.

The Seawolves are still in the getting-to-know-you phase. They have a dozen newcomers, a couple of redshirts and one returner from last season's 21-8 team – Curtis Ryan, a 6–foot-9 sophomore who gathered nine rebounds in a combined 28 minutes in the two weekend games.

"It's a group that's just learning to play mentally together," Osborne said after Friday's game. "We're just three games in and I don't know if we have all 12 of our active guys who are trusting in our system right now."

UAA's biggest bright spot was the play of senior forward Jacob Lamkpin, a senior transfer from the University of the Pacific who delivered double-doubles on both nights.

The 6-9 forward recorded 12 points and 13 rebounds on Friday and 16 points and 10 rebounds on Saturday. He was a combined 11 of 18 from the field, making him UAA's most accurate shooter of the weekend and lone pick on the all-tournament team.

D.J. Ursery, a 6-4 senior guard who also transferred from Pacific, bounced back from a 3-of-9 shooting night against Hawaii Pacific to score 21 points on 9-of-15 shooting against Chaminade.

UAA's only other double-figure scorer over the weekend was Josiah Wood, a 6-5 junior guard who played two seasons at California's Butte College before joining the Seawolves this season. Wood dropped in 12 points against Chaminade.

Osborne said his players need to trust UAA's offensive system and make more passes instead of trying to score on their own.

"It happens sometimes and it's more likely to happen here with nine new guys in a system, coming from all kinds of different systems and trying to come together," Osborne said.

The men will play the final game in back-to-back tripleheaders Friday and Saturday at the Alaska Airlines Center. The first two games each day are round-robin games in the Seawolf Hoops Classic women's tournament. The UAF women play at 3 p.m. each day and the UAA women play each day at 5:15 p.m. The men's games tip off at 7:30 p.m.