After close to 40 yrs the Great Alaska Shootout is hosting it’s final tournament this week. The tournament started when I was a freshman in high school with some great teams and players. I got to see Kentucky with Kyle Macy, Mel Turpin and Sam Bowie, UNC with James Worthy, Sam Perkins and Al Wood, Patrick Ewing as a freshman, eventual NBA greats like Glenn Rivers, Joe Dumars, Rony Seikaly, Derrick Coleman and Sherman Douglas of Syracuse, defending National Champions like NC St and Villanova (in 85).

An especially memorable tourney was in ‘94 when BYU came to play lead by Russell Larsen, Ken Roberts and Robbie Reid. Both Reid and Larsen made the all tournament team and BYU beat Oklahoma St and Louisville to get to the title game against the Golden Gophers. In the opening round BYU faced #19 Oklahoma St and Bryant “Big Country” Reeves. In the 2nd half of that game BYU employed a box and one defense and took their best perimeter player out of the game (Randy Rutherford) while packing in on Reeves in the paint to pull away with a 10 pt win.

In the championship game vs Minnesota, BYU didn’t play as well as they had in the previous 2 rounds but got a good game from Robbie Reid who hit 5 of 9 from 3 to lead the Cougars. It wasn’t enough as the Golden Gophers prevailed 79-74. This was the 3rd preseason tournament in a row where BYU made it to the tourney title game only to lose (one year it was to #1 Duke).

My personal highlight moment was in 1984, the year I walked on at the University of Alaska Anchorage. I tore my ACL in the preseason and didn’t play that year. I remember that tourney because we had Danny Manning and Kansas along with Maryland (Len Bias and Adrian Branch). I’ll never forget watching the Maryland Terripans team by bus at the UAA Sportscenter to do a shoot around after we had finished our practice. They looked huge and well turned out, seemed like everyone was dressed to impress, cashmere overcoats, shirts and ties etc. I think we all must have looked like little kids with our mouths gaped open as we watched them coolly stroll in and by us to the locker room.

We played Bias and the Terripans in the 2nd round of the tourney and quickly got over our awe of him and had a shot at winning the game in the final seconds but turned the ball over couldn’t get a shot off. We lost 54-52 despite being a DII program and clearly out sized and not in the same league athletically.

The last 10-15 yrs saw the GAS lose some of it’s luster as more and more places around the country started their own preseason holiday tourney. But for a stretch of 20 yrs or so the GAS attracted some of the best of the best to play and tourney alums include 30 teams that were former NCAA national champions. It’s sad to see such a legacy come to a close.