Nanooks men's hoops team earns national honor

April 13, 2016

The Alaska Nanooks men’s basketball team received a national honor on Wednesday, when the squad was named the HERO Sports NCAA Division II Breakout Team of the Year.

The Nanooks had a storybook 2015-16 campaign, as the team posted the second-most wins in program history and set the school record for most Great Northwest Athletic Conference regular season wins. Alaska went 22-8 and 15-3 in GNAC play to finish the regular season in second place. It was the highest GNAC regular season finish for the team since their first-place finish in 2004-05. The team also made it’s first-ever appearance in the GNAC championship game, where they fell short to No. 1-seed Western Oregon, 78-71.

“It’s a nice honor to receive,” said head coach Mick Durham. “It’s a very deserving honor because of our huge turnaround in the win column. Hats off to our guys for putting in the work to make that turnaround possible.”

The 22 wins marks a 15-win improvement from the 2014-15 total of seven, which was the biggest turnaround in the win column in all of NCAA Division II over the past two seasons. Alaska also had the biggest improvement in the BennettRank, which is a ranking systems used by HERO Sports. The Nanooks ended the 2015-16 season ranked 22nd in the BennettRank NCAA Division II Poll, which was a 178-spot improvement over the 2014-15 final ranking.

The GNAC had three teams featured in the HERO Sports Breakout Team formula, as Western Oregon finished sixth and Alaska Anchorage finished seventh.

HERO Sports is a website designed to provide the same level of coverage and data analysis to schools that don’t have the luxury of a nation-wide fan base.

For more information on the Alaska Nanooks men’s basketball team, follow @NanooksMBB on Twitter.