Seasiders turned it on late in year
By Catherine E. Toth
Advertiser Staff Writer
With three games left in the season, Ken Wagner held a team meeting.
He told his Brigham Young-Hawai'i basketball team it was lacking something after losing to rival University of Hawai'i-Hilo last month. He told them they were better than anybody else, but had to win every game to make it to nationals.
Junior forward Alexus Foyle took that to heart.
"We had to play every game like it was the last game of the season," said Foyle, the Pacific West Conference Player of the Year.
The team went on to beat Hawai'i Pacific and Chaminade, en route to an at-large berth to the NCAA Division II West Regional, which begins today.
Seeded sixth, the Seasiders (19-9 overall, 10-5 PacWest), co-champions of the PacWest Conference, play Seattle Pacific, the ninth-ranked team in the nation at 3:30 p.m. today in San Bernardino, Calif.
Foyle, the team's leading scorer at 20 points per game, is confident his team will play the way Wagner wants them to.
"I believe in him," Foyle said about Wagner, who earned PacWest Coach of the Year honors. "After the season went by, everything he said worked. Once we listened to him, we did better. He's a great coach, the best I ever had."
Wagner is emphasizing the basics: grab rebounds, play tough defense, be patient with the ball.
The loss to Hilo was a turning point for BYUH.
"Attitude-wise, I didn't really see what I had hoped for all year until (that game)," Wagner said. "There was the awareness that the season may be over and we didn't get it done. We were outplayed and beaten. If we were going to be successful, we had to play hard all the time."
Seattle Pacific (23-4 overall, 15-3 Great Northwest Athletic Conference) is seeded third in the tournament and holds a 3-0 edge over BYUH. The Falcons were tri-champions of the GNAC with Humboldt State (Calif.) and Western Washington.
Other teams in the West Regional include fifth-ranked Humboldt State (24-3, 15-3 GNAC), the No. 2 seed and BYUH's opponent tomorrow should the Seasiders win today; third-ranked Cal State-San Bernardino (26-1, 21-1 California Collegiate Athletic Association), the No. 1 seed; Montana State-Billings (21-6, 10-5 PacWest), the No. 4 seed; and Cal State-Bakersfield (23-4, 18-4 CCAA), the No. 3 seed.
