This Week In Warrior Athletics

November 6, 2006

EVENTS:

Volleyball:  at Frontier Conference Tournament, vs. Carroll College, 5 p.m., Friday, Nov. 10, Butte, Mont.

Men’s basketball: vs. Seattle U, 2 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 11, Activity Center.

Women’s basketball: at Westminster Tournament, Salt Lake City, vs. Berry College, 1 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 9; vs. Concordia-Irvine, 1 p.m., Friday, Nov. 10, vs. Albertson, 1 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 11.

Cross country: NAIA at-large berths announced, Tuesday, Nov. 7. 

Volleyball: 

The Warriors look to make some noise at the Frontier Conference Tournament, which gets under way Friday at the HPER Complex in Butte, Mont., on the campus of Montana Tech.

LCSC is the No. 6 seed in the tournament and will take on No. 3 seed Carroll College at 5 p.m. in the first round. In other matches Friday, top seed Great Falls tangles with No. 8 seed Montana Western at noon, followed by No. 4 seed Rocky Mountain and No. 5 seed Montana Tech at 2 p.m. The final match Friday has No. 2 seed Westminster and No. 7 seed Montana State-Northern at 7 p.m.

Friday’s four winners will play in the semifinals Saturday morning. Saturday’s two losers will meet at 5 p.m. in the third-place match, which will be followed at 7 p.m. by the championship match between the two semifinal winners.

Great Falls and Westminster tied for the league title, but Great Falls swept third place Carroll, while Westminster split with Carroll. That gave Great Falls the No. 1 seed in the tournament.

LCSC is coming off a 30-19, 30-26, 30-27 victory over Montana-Western to close the regular season. The Warriors finished 4-10 in league play and are 8-18 overall. Carroll, which is 9-5 and 18-8, swept LCSC during the regular season, winning 30-27, 30-23, 30-18 in Lewiston early in the season and than hanging on to win 30-19, 20-30, 30-22, 26-30, 15-13 in Helena during mid-October.

Sophomore Julie Maciboba leads LCSC in kills with 222, while Brittney Kubik leads the team in blocks with 84. Lindsay Scott paces the team in digs with 556.

The tournament champion advances to the Region I Tournament, which will be held Nov. 16-18 at Albertson College in Caldwell. 

Tournament Pairings:
Friday’s matches
    Noon – #1 University of Great Falls (12-2, 19-7) vs. #8 Montana Western (1-13, 1-26)
    2 p.m. – #4 Rocky Mountain (8-6, 15-8) vs. #5 Montana Tech (7-7, 12-14)
    5 p.m. – #3 Carroll College (9-5, 18-8) vs.  #6 Lewis-Clark (4-10, 8-18)
    7 p.m. – #2 Westminster College (12-2, 18-9) vs. #7 MSU-Northern (3-11, 5-14)
Saturday’s matches
    10 a.m. – Winner of UGF/Western vs. Winner of Rocky/Montana Tech
    Noon – Winner of Carroll/Lewis-Clark vs. Winner of Westminster/Northern
    5 p.m. – Consolation Losers of semi-finals play
    7 p.m. – Championship 

Men’s basketball: 

The Warrior men have a quieter week as they play host to Seattle University, an NCAA Division II school on Saturday.

The men stand 2-1 on the season after playing three games in five days last week, losing to only Point Loma Nazarene, which is ranked No. 11 in the NAIA.

The contest is listed as an exhibition game for Seattle, which won’t officially open its season until the following week. Seattle has defeated an alumni team and Northwest University 85-77 last week. Seattle U. went 16-11 last year, the most wins in a season since the 1993-94 campaign when Seattle won 17 games.

Mike Gordy, a 6-foot-5 junior from Denver, has a strong opening week for the Warriors. In two games at the Carroll Tournament, he averaged 31 points and 7.5 rebounds a game.

The Warriors only have one game next week as well, an exhibition contest against Eastern Washington. LCSC then returns home on Nov. 24-25 for Cannon’s Building Material Center Tournament. On Nov. 25, LCSC will play Oklahoma City, which is ranked No. 2 in the NAIA.

Women’s basketball: 

The Warrior women expect to be at full strength when they kick off their season in the three day tournament at Westminster in Salt Lake City.

The Warriors open against Berry College of Rome, Ga., in Thursday’s opening round at 1 p.m. Berry is ranked No. 34 in the NAIA preseason poll, while LCSC is ranked No. 10.

LCSC also will take on Concordia University of Irvine and Albertson College in the tournament. Westminster and Montana-Western also will take part in the tournament. All three Frontier Conference teams will only play the three non-conference teams in the pre-determined tournament format.

Berry College is 1-0 on the season after defeating Morris College 86-54 in its opener. Concordia and Albertson, like LCSC, will be opening the season on Thursday.

The Warriors will play five contests on the road before kicking off the home season on Nov. 17-18 in the Staples Classic. LCSC will face Evergreen College and Eastern Oregon. Like the men, LCSC women will spend a majority of the early season on the road with nine of its first 11 games away from Lewiston.

LCSC lost a pair of exhibition games over the weekend, losing a heartbreaking contest to Washington State University by six points on Friday and then falling to Boise State on Sunday. 

Cross Country: 

The Warrior men’s and women’s teams will learn about their national fate on Tuesday when the NAIA announce at-large berths to the national meet.

The LCSC men finished second in the NAIA Region I meet last Saturday, while the women were fourth. Only the champions of each region earn an automatic berth to the national meet, which will be held in Louisville, Ky., on Nov. 18.

Another 15 at-large berths are available and both LCSC teams are nationally ranked, the women at No. 13 and the men at No. 18, which should help their cause.

Both Calin Hantau and Aaron Galbraith earned all-Region I honors for the Warriors.