SEATTLE – Newly crowned Great Northwest Athletic Conference tournament champion Seattle Pacific starts this season's postseason journey at a familiar venue.
 
The third-ranked Falcons (25-3) drew the No. 3 seed in the West Region and travel to Bellingham, Wash. for their ninth consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance. That is the longest current streak among Division II men's basketball programs.
 
Seattle Pacific opens with a first-round matchup against No. 6 seed Grand Canyon on Friday, Mar. 15 at noon in Carver Gymnasium on the Western Washington University campus.
 
“We're excited to play them. They'll be very, very good just like anybody else we could have been matched up with or could potentially be matched up with later in the tournament,” said fourth-year SPU coach Ryan Looney.
 
“Grand Canyon always does a really nice job defensively. They make it tough on you at that end of the floor. We're going to have to be good on the offensive end, be willing to play together and execute what we do. We'll also have to be good defensively ourselves.”
 
The Antelopes (23-7) tied for second in the Pac West Conference standings with a 14-4 record. They lost 58-45 to Chaminade in the league tournament semifinals.
 
The Falcons and GCU met five times in the previous three seasons with SPU winning three of those encounters.
 
The 64-team field was announced Sunday night and SPU is one of eight teams vying for the West Region title, joining regional top-seed and host Western Washington. The defending national champion Vikings (27-2) have a first-round matchup with No. 8 seed Chaminade (20-9) from the Pac West.
 
League regular-season winner WWU and SPU are the only two GNAC teams in the West Region field. The Falcons defeated Western 72-70 on Saturday in the league tournament championship game.
 
The SPU-Grand Canyon victor advances to Monday's semifinals to meet the winner between second-seeded Cal Poly Pomona (27-2) and No. 7 Chico State (19-10) at 2:30 p.m. Those two California Collegiate Athletic Association rivals met in the league tournament title tilt with Pomona winning 78-64.
 
The other half of the bracket has No. 4 seed Dixie State (22-6), the Pac West tournament champion, squaring off with No. 5 Cal State San Bernardino (19-8) out of the CCAA. The winner of that game will meet the survivor of the Western Washington-Chaminade clash.
 
The regional championship game is slated for Tuesday, Mar. 19 at 8:30 p.m. All three opening rounds will be played in Bellingham.
 
The West Region champion advances to the Elite Eight at Freedom Hall in Louisville, Ky. The national quarterfinals are set for Mar. 28 and the semifinals on Mar. 30.
 
The NCAA is celebrating the 75th Division I Men's Basketball Championship in 2013. As part of the celebration, all three men's basketball division championship games will be played in the same city and weekend. The Division II national championship game will be played on April 7 at Philips Arena in Atlanta, Ga. CBS will televise that game live at 1 p.m. Pacific Time.
 
For the fifth straight season SPU will remain in the state of Washington to start the playoffs. The venue for this year's tournament is WWU's Carver Gym, the site of the 2009, 2010 and 2012 West Regionals. Last year in Bellingham, Western Washington defeated the Falcons 56-50 in the regional championship game. In 2011 the Falcons advanced to the semifinals of the West Regional conducted in Ellensburg.
 
“We don't really care where it is, we're just excited to continue to play,” Looney said. “At the end of the day you are going to have to beat good teams on different floors to win the entire thing. We're just going to take the approach that we don't necessarily think it's too big of a deal where we are at.”
 
The Falcons won their NCAA opening-round game in four of the last five seasons, including a 70-68 win over Dixie State last year. They advanced to the national semifinals in 2000 and 2006.
 
Tickets for the West Regional go on sale Monday at 11 a.m. They can be purchased by calling the Western Washington ticket office at 360-650-2583.
 
 
2013 NCAA DIVISION II MEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT
West Regional
Carver Gymnasium/Bellingham, Wash.
 
Friday, March 15 (Regional Quarterfinals)
Game 1 - (#6) Grand Canyon vs. (#3) Seattle Pacific, 12:00 p.m.
Game 2 - (#7) Chico State vs. (#2) Cal Poly Pomona, 2:30 p.m.
Game 3 - (#5) Cal State San Bernardino vs. (#4) Dixie State, 5:00 p.m.
Game 4 - (#8) Chaminade vs. (#1) Western Washington, 7:30 p.m.
 
Monday, March 18 (Regional Semifinals)
Game 5 - Winner Game 1 vs. Winner Game 2, 2:30 p.m.
Game 6 - Winner Game 3 vs. Winner Game 4, 7:30 p.m.
 
Tuesday, March 19 (Regional Championship)
Game 7 - Winner Game 5 vs. Winner Game 6, 8:30 p.m.
 
• Pacific Standard Times listed for all games
• All games to be played in Carver Gymnasium (capacity 2,534) on the Western Washington University campus in Bellingham