ANCHORAGE, Alaska – The 2016-17 season for the Central Washington University men's basketball team comes to and end with a 72-84 loss to Alaska Anchorage Saturday night at the Alaska Airlines Center.
 
The Wildcats, who needed a win in its final regular season contest to advance to the Great Northwest Athletic Conference Tournament, finish the season with a 14-12 record and a 9-11 mark in the GNAC.  Anchorage improves to 21-7, 15-5 in the GNAC and will enter the tournament as the second seed.
 
"This is a tough loss for us, for many reasons," CWU Head Coach Greg Sparling said.  "Not only do we miss out on postseason, but our seniors have played their final game.  Hats off to Anchorage, they are a great team and played great basketball tonight."
 
Dom Hunter led the offensive attack for the Wildcats scoring 24 points on 8 of 18 shooting.  Jawan Stepney added 14, all of which came in the first half.  Marc Rodgers also scored in double figures with 10 points.
 
The Wildcats shot 43.3 percent from the field, but just 15 percent from three-point territory, going 3 of 20.  Anchorage shot 45.5 percent from the field, but converted on 24 of 31 shots from the free throw line, outscoring the Wildcats by 13 at the charity stripe.
 
Central Washington found most of its success in the paint where they outscored the Seawolves 40-25.
 
The Wildcats jumped out to a 6-0 lead behind a strong start by Stepney.  Central held the lead for the majority of the first half, before the Seawolves used an 11-4 run to take a seven-point lead with 2:39 to go in the frame.  The Wildcats ended the half on a 7-0 run of their own to enter halftime deadlocked at 35.
 
"I thought we played well in the first half.  We weathered a couple of storms and played hard-nosed basketball," Sparling added.  "We rebounded very well to open the game, but in the second half we struggled to get into a rhythm, and fell short defensively."
 
After the teams traded buckets to open the second half, Hunter hit a three pointer to give CWU a 42-41 advantage.  Unfortunately, that was the last lead the Wildcats held in the contest as the Seawolves built a 15-point lead, ending with the 84-72 advantage.
 
Anchorage guard Sekou Wiggs led all scorers with 26 points on 7 of 16 shooting.  He was joined by Spencer Svejcar and Diante Mitchell who had 21 and 18 points, respectively.  Alaska Anchorage finishes the season with a perfect home record at 16-0.