After 40 years of Thanksgiving week hoops, Great Alaska Shootout is history

The final Great Alaska Shootout is in the books, the last chapter of a 40-year tradition that right from the start defied plausibility by bringing the giants of the game to Alaska in the cold and dark of late November.

For years, the Shootout turned Anchorage into the center of the college basketball world for one week every year. But at the end, it seemed like Shootout Lite.

Mid-major teams replaced the marquee teams, who followed the money to tournaments with bigger guarantees and better television coverage. Crowds that used to pack the Sullivan Arena dwindled drastically. Thursday morning's Turkey Trot, with nearly 1,500 runners, outdrew several of this year's games.

The empty seats, more than anything, made it clear it's time for the end. That and Alaska's budget crisis, which has necessitated cuts to UAA's athletic department. Once a money-maker, the Shootout in recent years has become a money-loser, and when tuition is rising and staff is being cut, it's difficult to justify keeping a basketball tournament that can't sustain itself.

And so it's time to sound the final buzzer on one of Alaska's great sporting traditions.

All week at the Alaska Airlines Center, the tournament's home since 2014, longtime fans have wondered what they'll do next year at Thanksgiving. Cook a turkey? Watch the Maui Classic? Run the Turkey Trot?

Lee Piccard, a former UAA administrator, has seen every single Shootout game since the first one in 1978. He's never missed a women's game either, a streak dating back to the first Northern Lights Invitational in 1980.

"A good run," he said, talking about the tournament, although he could have been talking about himself.

Piccard figures UAA will replace the Shootout with something more modest next Thanksgiving, maybe a four-team round-robin tournament. Whatever it is, he said, he'll show up. "I'm gonna die here," he joked.

You can bet it won't involve Division I teams. Those days are over.

What's left are memories. North Carolina's Sam Perkins. Purdue's Glenn Robinson. UConn's Ray Allen. Marquette's Dwyane Wade. Washington State's Klay Thompson. Nearly all of the coaching greats have been here — Jim Valvano, Dean Smith, Bobby Knight, Denny Crum, Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, Tom Izzo, Jud Heathcote, Gene Keady, Jerry Tarkanian and so many more.

As a measure of the tournament's history, consider this: Keno Davis, the coach of the Central Michigan team that played Cal State Bakersfield in Saturday's championship game, is the son of Tom Davis, who coached Iowa to the championship of the 1986 Shootout. Try finding history like that at the Battle 4 Atlantis.

"For me, it's bittersweet," said Patrick Flanigin, who came to Anchorage in the late 1970s to play professionally for the Anchorage Northern Knights of the old Continental Basketball Association and now is a volunteer coach for the UAA women, who beat Division I Tulsa in Thursday's championship game.

"I love the fact that we won it, but I'm sad because it's been such a Thanksgiving tradition," Flanigin said. "You may not see some people all year until the Shootout."

The UAA women earned the distinction of claiming the women's championship at the final Shootout by beating Tulsa 59-52 on Thanksgiving. It was their seventh title in tournament history.

The UAA men went 1-2, overcoming a horrible shooting performance in a first-round loss to Bakersfield to take a second-round win over Santa Clara and then losing 55-46 to College of Charleston in their Shootout finale Saturday.

The Seawolves, the only Division II team in the history of the Shootout, hung with Charleston for 30 minutes before the Cougars used a 7-0 run to take control.

A victory would have left them with 40 wins in 40 Shootouts. Instead they finish with 39 wins against 81 losses — not a record to be embarrassed about when you're always the underdog.

Saturday's game was coach Rusty Osborne's 81st Shootout game. He's been a part of 27 Shootouts, 13 as an assistant coach and 14 as a head coach. The Shootout has been a recruiting tool for Osborne and the coaches who came before him, but Osborne understands the financial realities facing Alaska and, closer to home, UAA's athletic department. He didn't complain, at least not publicly, when the university decided this year's Shootout would be the last.

After the game Osborne articulated what die-hard Shootout fans know: Even without the Dukes and Kentuckys, the tournament served up quality Division I basketball year after year, including this year.

Three straight games this week were decided by buzzer-beating 3-pointers — both of Friday night's semifinals (Central Michigan beat Cal Poly 56-53 on Shawn Roundtree's trey with four seconds left; Bakersfield beat Idaho 64-62 on Justin Davis' trey with two seconds left) and Thursday's late game, in which UAA beat Santa Clara 78-73 in an overtime period forced by Maleke Haynes' running 35-footer that swished through the net with no time left in regulation.

"If you couldn't get excited about those three games," Osborne said, "we're not gonna convince you."

But it's tough to make people hungry for Central Michigan and Bakersfield after they've tasted Duke and Kentucky.

"People will appreciate it more when it's gone," Osborne said, and he's probably right.

The Great Alaska Shootout is history. All that's left to say is thanks for the memories, and see you at next year's Turkey Trot.

This column is the opinion of sports editor Beth Bragg. Reach her at bbragg@adn.com.