Athletic Director Steve Cobb: Welcome everyone, I am here to formally announce the University of Alaska-Anchorage Seawolves will move up to Division 1 in basketball, effective for the 2007-2008 basketball season. We received a large anonymous donation to help fund the endeavor. With that boring statement stuff out of the way, I now introduce our first Division 1 basketball head coach, Coach Tovarich.
Tovarich: Hello everyone. Sorry this press conference isn't about hockey like you probably all assumed it was. They'll have to share the Division 1 spotlight with us now. Coach Tovarich 3.0 doesn't like to talk a lot either, so questions?
Reporter: Are you here for the long haul or are you going to jump to another school when you get a chance?
Tovarich: I intend to retire here. There'll be no career progression to follow. It's not about me, it's about the school and the program. I just stand up here for press conferences and coach the team.
Reporter: Is it realistic to be an independent Division 1 basketball program?
Tovarich: Well, no conference would take us. Something about non-existent TV market and not enough fans and lots of travel and these blah blah blah excuses. It's the ultimate challenge to build a program up here in Alaska anyway, but being a relevant program in D1 basketball in this scenario is indeed probably the biggest challenge I could think of. Games will be more difficult. Recruiting will be more difficult. I expect great difficulty, but I am here to get it done.
Reporter: How did you build this roster?
Tovarich: Basically when Centenary decided to drop down to a lower Division, I begged them all to transfer here to continue playing D1 basketball.
Reporter: How about your assistant coaches?
Tovarich: Oh, good. You guys love those too. I didn't exactly have the pick of the litter on those. This whole experiment of a program up here might be a career killer. I hired some people. I'd love to tell you how great they are at coaching basketball and recruiting and scouting, but it wouldn't be great if I got up here and lied during my first ever press conference.
Reporter: What do you expect to accomplish during this first season?
Tovarich: Scheduling as an Independent is a nightmare, as I've already learned. There's lots of rules, some very odd ones. We put together a few different road trips. If we're going to fly all the way over to the mainland, we might as well stay a while. We'll alternate every year between the Great Alaska Shootout and the Top of the World Classic. We'll get around to every part of the country. We've got a handful of power schools, some major, some mids, some small. We'll assess after this season how much of a challenge we're capable of and adjust the schedule next year. Eventually though, once we build up some talent and aspire for bigger things, we'll have to put a schedule together that would help us get an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament and we'll have to figure out how to do that later. That's a long way off I expect. Baby steps for now.
Reporter: Who do you consider our rival to be?
Tovarich: Hawaii is the only team that made sense to me, a respectful rivalry of non-contiguousness, so we'll see them every year. That sounds like enough of me talking for now. I'll get you all the roster and the schedule and the depth chart and such later on. For now, I've got a lot of recruiting work to do and I'll see you all again after the first game.