Shootout notebook: Dance cam fever, extra games for tourney teams

UAA is making good use of the huge scoreboard that hangs above the court at the Alaska Airlines Center.

Besides showing highlights from the game, the video board gives fans a chance to see themselves dancing and grooving on the big screen.

Fans are encouraged to make drumbeats for the bongo cam (which has a giant set of bongos at bottom of the screen, so it looks like people are playing them), the flex cam (which plays the Hulk Hogan theme song, "I Am a Real American"), the Carlton cam (which shows Carlton's dance moves from "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air"), the Lion King cam (which shows Simba held high in the air by a baboon), the the disco cam, the awkward dad dance cam and more.

The Lion King cam encourages fans to hoist children into the air. Earlier this season during a UAA men's basketball game, it was deployed late in the game during a timeout.

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UAA senior Connor Devine happened to look up at the scoreboard just as the camera found his wife, Kalli, holding up their 1-year-old son, Daniel.

It was a cool moment, Devine said, except for one thing.

"My son was crying," he said.

Let’s play four

The Shootout began a few days early for Nevada and Iona.

The teams played each other Sunday at Nevada — the Wolf Pack rolled to a 91-76 win — before heading to Anchorage.

The game was a freebie for both schools — it won't count against either team's NCAA-dictated season limit, because they used the Shootout's exemption.

The exemption, put in place by the NCAA decades ago to encourage teams to travel to Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, is the reason the Shootout exists. The rule allows teams to play up to four games at an exempted event while only counting one game against their season limits (all of the games are reflected in their win-loss records, however).

Because men's teams play three games at the Shootout, they have a fourth to spare. Iona and Nevada used theirs to play each other in what was called a Great Alaska Shootout "associated game."

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Oakland also made use of the exemption for a game earlier this season against Goshen.

In the 1990s, the NCAA extended the exemption rule to events besides those held in Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. These days, just about every Division I tournament in November is an exempt event, which diminishes the lure of the Shootout.

That's why the Shootout doesn't get top-tier teams like it used to.  Those teams are going to other exempt events that don't require as much travel or involve sunny beaches and ESPN television coverage.