Historic night looms for WWU basketball

It has been a remarkable enough few days of basketball already for Western Washington University, as the Vikings have had the rare honor of playing host to the West Regionals for the both the men's and women's NCAA Division II National Tournaments.

And tonight it gets capped with WWU playing regional championship games at Sam Carver Gymnasium against a pair of its oldest and most historic rivals.

The Viking women (27-3) face Simon Fraser (25-5) at 6 p.m., the WWU men (29-2), the defending regional and national champion, meet Seattle Pacific (27-3) at 8:30 p.m. The men's game will be a repeat of last year's regional final, one that WWU won 56-50.

All four teams are nationally ranked. The WWU women, the regular-season and tourney champions of the Great Northwest Athletic Conference, are No.5 in the USA Today Top 25, and SFU is No.11. The SPU men, who won the GNAC tournament, are No.2 in the NABC Coaches Poll, and WWU men, the GNAC regular-season champs, are No.5.

The WWU-SFU rivalry was one of the hottest matchups of the 1990s. During the Vikings' last 10 years as an NAIA member (1989-98), the two schools met in the post-season for seven of them. Often both teams would be ranked in the top 10 nationally in the NAIA.

The depth of the competition was reflected in the stands. Eight of the meetings of the two schools were played before crowds of 1,000 fans or more, five of them at WWU, with a high of 2,011 in a NAIA District 1 Championship game at Simon Fraser on Feb. 27, 1992.

Even when Western's move to NCAA Division II in 1998 and SFU's move shortly after to a Canadian affiliation meant the schools played only pre-season exhibitions, the rivalry simmered, then returned to full boil when the Clan became the NCAA's first international member and joined the Vikings as part of the GNAC in 2010-11.

The men's rivalry with Seattle Pacific is even older, as the two teams first met in the 1933-34 season. The two schools first post-season meeting was in 1961, an 80-75 Seattle Pacific victory that occurred a few months before Western opened up Carver Gym, the site of tonight's matchup. The Falcons moved to the NCAA shortly after, roughly a quarter-century before the Vikings made the move.

Tonight's game is the fourth NCAA tournament meeting in the last eight years between the schools, the third in a regional final.

As with the women, big crowds have been a measure of the rivalry. Both regular-season meetings this year drew full houses of more than 2,000 fans. Since the 2000-01 season, there have been 10 crowds of 2,000 or better, seven of them at WWU, with a high of 2,632 in 2005-06.

Tonight's games are the final home contests for two Viking squads that so far been perfect in Carver Gym this season. The WWU men are 16-0 at home in 2012-13 and are working on a school-record 26-game unbeaten streak at Carver Gym over the last two seasons. The Viking women are 15-0 and have won 19 in a row over the past two years.

Those home records have been part of the best combined season in school history.