This morning at 10, the UAA women's basketball team will suit up for a game at one of the country's most storied and hostile basketball arenas, against one of the sport's giants: Duke University.
The exhibition game is being touted as a showdown between Division I and Division II powers. Duke is ranked sixth in the nation in the big leagues; UAA is ranked eighth in the not-so-big leagues.
But anyone familiar with UAA's record against Division I competition knows there's a great divide between the divisions.
UAA historically fields a strong men's team and of late has boasted an even stronger women's team. Yet the men are 28-62 all-time against Division I competition in the Shootout and the women are 29-47.
So anytime the Seawolves knock off a Division I team, it's noteworthy. And if they knock off a ranked team? It can send tremors through the college basketball landscape.
A UAA win this morning over Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium would be huge -- even though the Seawolves are coming off two straight national semifinal appearances, even though they return many players from last season's 31-4 team (and added many redshirts and recruits who look capable of keeping them a Division II power) and even though they are coached by the crafty and unflappable Tim Moser.
It maybe would qualify as one of the biggest upsets in Alaska sports history.
Maybe.
It's a tough list to crack. Take a look at our top 10 Alaska sports upsets -- listed here in no particular order. Then go online to adn.com and share your memories of these surprising moments, or offer your own notable upset.
Libby wins it!
No one was surprised that a woman won the 1985 Iditarod, but just about everyone was stunned that the winner was Libby Riddles and not Susan Butcher, who'd been knocking on the door in previous races.
Even more astonishing was the way Riddles won.
With a blizzard keeping the leaders pinned down in Shaktoolik, Riddles defied the odds and the weather by driving 13 dogs into the teeth of the storm. No one else was willing to risk such a daring move. Three days later Riddles was in Nome, the first woman to win the race.
Treadmill to glory
Experts had their eyes on any number of contenders at the 2000 Olympic marathon trials in Columbia, S.C.
Anchorage's Chris Clark wasn't one of them.
Yet it was Clark -- who trained for the March race by running on a treadmill all winter -- who won the race and the berth in the Olympic women's marathon in Sydney, Australia.
Ranked 22nd among 209 marathoners, Clark was No. 1 on race day, running a personal-best 2 hours, 33 minutes, 31 seconds. A mother and part-time pathologist, Clark dominated a field that included professional runners -- who didn't hide their disbelief when Clark triumphed.
"Those women looked at me like, 'What are you doing?' '' Clark said in the days following the race. "Only I had the (winner's) jacket and the bouquet.''
UAA rocks Michigan
"They're gonna call to see if it was a misprint," joked UAA basketball coach Ron Abegglen.
And for good reason. No one believed what happened at the 1988 Utah Classic, where the Seawolves upended Glen Rice and second-ranked Michigan 70-66 in one of college basketball's biggest upsets of that or any season.
The game made the cover of USA Today's sports section and was compared to Chaminade's famous upset of Ralph Sampson and top-ranked Virginia several years earlier.
That it happened on a neutral court made UAA's achievement even more staggering. "Holy Jesus," was the reaction from UAA athletic director Ron Petro. "That's unbelievable."
Boos for Birdstone
One of the biggest days of John Hendrickson's life was the time he ruined the party for a nation rooting for a horse named Smarty Jones to become racing's first Triple Crown winner in more than a quarter century.
Hendrickson is the West High graduate who married socialite Marilou Whitney and helped revived the Whitney breeding farm in Lexington, Ky.
They took a bay colt named Birdstone to the 2004 Belmont Stakes, where Smarty Jones was the darling of a crowd of 120,139 and a large national television audience.
A late burst of speed by Hendrickson's 36-to-1 longshot denied Smarty Jones and put Birdstone in the winner's circle, where he was roundly booed.
Birdstone's revenge? He was retired to stud, sired this year's Kentucky Derby upset winner, Mine That Bird, and gets $10,000 breeding fees that are expected to skyrocket.
Noorvik's wonder boy
Before the 1981 state cross country championships, few had ever heard of Noorvik's Elliott Sampson, who trained on the tundra north of the Arctic Circle.
The race favorite that day in Palmer was Marcus Dunbar of Anchorage, who later became a national champion in the indoor mile.
Dunbar was winning when, from out of nowhere, an Eskimo kid in sweatpants zipped past and went on to win. Sampson's victory inspired people throughout Bush Alaska and still amazes those who witnessed it.
America's choice
Underdogs aren't always teams or individuals. Sometimes an entire city can be an underdog -- like Anchorage in 1985, when it competed to become America's bid city for the 1992 Winter Olympics.
Salt Lake City was the big favorite. But a slick presentation by the Anchorage Organizing Committee, which had begun its quest only a year earlier, won over U.S. Olympic Committee voters -- especially the athletes. Anchorage became the first city to earn the nomination on the first ballot.
After bidding unsuccessfully for the 1992 and 1994 Olympics, Anchorage lost its status as America's choice to Salt Lake, which eventually was awarded the 2002 Winter Olympics.
Moe is golden
Early in 1994, Sports Illustrated dismissed Tommy Moe as "no soaring success story" and predicted the Winter Olympics in Norway would be a bust for Moe and the U.S. Ski Team.
A couple weeks later, the magazine's cover heralded Moe as a "Golden Boy" and showed him skiing to the gold medal in the downhill, the most glamorous men's event at the Winter Games.
The fabled SI jinx had no impact on the laid-back skier from Girdwood (by way of Palmer). A couple days later, Moe was back on the mountain and claiming a silver medal in the super-G. This time, no one was surprised.
Miracle on ice
Back in 1991, UAA toiled in hockey's no-man's-land as an independent, a team with no conference affiliation. It earned that season's lone postseason berth reserved for independents and headed to Massachusetts and a best-of-3 NCAA tournament series with mighty Boston College.
Boston College, a member of powerful Hockey East, had been ranked as high as No. 2 in the NCAA poll that season and was an overwhelming favorite.
The Seawolves had other ideas. They rallied for a 3-2 win in the first game, then won 3-1 the next night. It was the upset of the year in college hockey.
"You shocked?" UAA defenseman Lorne Knauft said after the sweep. "You should be."
A star is born
Hard to believe there was a time when George Attla was an unknown in the world of sled-dog racing.
But he was in 1958, when he was 24 and entered in his first professional race -- the Fur Rendezvous World Championship Sled Dog Race in Anchorage. Lame in one leg because of childhood tuberculosis, he shocked the field by setting a course record and upending defending champion Gareth Wright.
The Huslia Hustler went on to win 10 Fur Rondy titles and eight Open North American championships and became one of Alaska's most popular athletes.
UAA, Kaiser slay giant
In front of a rabid Sullivan Arena crowd and a disbelieving national television audience, UAA was David to Wake Forest's Goliath in the first round of the 1993 Great Alaska Shootout.
Wake Forest came to town with All-America guard Randolph Childress and a towering lineup that featured freshman Tim Duncan, a future two-time MVP in the NBA.
UAA countered with 6-foot-4 Jason Kaiser, a high school star from Service High. He pumped in 35 points as the outsized Seawolves held on 70-68 against the highly favored and highly regarded Demon Deacons.
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