Grand Canyon Falls to Dixie State

Saturday, February 5

GCU

5:15 p.m.

Grand Canyon

Dixie State

Chris Johnson scores two of his six points on a dunk against Dixie State Saturday.

2/5/2011 9:53:47 PM | Men's Basketball

'Lopes and two others trail first-place BYUH by one game

By: Steve Heath

Grand Canyon suffered a 70-59 Pacific West Conference loss to visiting Dixie State at Antelope Gymnasium Saturday.

GCU dropped to 10-7 overall and 5-2 in the PacWest. Dixie State is 12-5 and 5-2. Both teams, along with Chaminade (12-7, 5-2) are one-game out in the loss column to first-place BYU-Hawai’i (11-5, 6-1), which played later Saturday night.

“Give credit to Dixie, they outplayed us,” said GCU coach Russ Pennell. “They came in with a great game plan. I thought our guys were ready to play, sometimes you’re just not as good as the opponent and tonight that was the case. They had a little more drive and maybe even more desperation than we did. They needed this win to stay in the conference race.”

GCU jumped out to an 11-2 lead, but were outscored 27-9 over a 10-minute span. Early in the second half, the ‘Lopes trailed 41-26.

“I really thought the game got away from us in the middle of the first half,” Pennell said. “We just didn’t defend well enough and we let them shoot too good of a percentage. We kind of lost connection with them and were probably fortunate to only be down seven at the end of the first half.”

Dixie shot 52.2 percent in the first half, including 80 percent (4-of-5) from 3-point range.

Grand Canyon got to within seven, but couldn’t get any closer in the second half.

“Our defensive execution wasn’t very good tonight,” said GCU junior point guard Kyle Speed. “Dixie definitely came ready to play and if you don’t execute on the defensive end, it makes it difficult to win ballgames.”

Sophomore guard Brad Carroll led GCU in scoring with 12 points. Speed and junior guard Fletcher Wynn had eight. Senior Rony Tchatchoua had seven. Justin Wesolowski had a team-high eight rebounds to go with six points. Speed had four assists. Senior center Gaby Ngoundjo and junior guard Nick Witherill each had two steals.

“We got off to a good start, up 11-2, but they switched up their zone and we could never get back into a rhythm,” said Carroll.

Grand Canyon helped force 27 turnovers, but were outrebounded 42-23 and shot only 33.9 percent from the field.

GCU will get a chance to avenge an early season conference loss to Academy of Art when it hosts the Urban Knights Thursday at 7:15 p.m. It is the first of two home games next week. GCU will play host to Dominican at 3:15 p.m. Saturday.

“I told them, I love them and I’m proud of them,” said Pennell of his postgame talk with his team. “I told them, ‘You’re the same team, the same guys that beat Chaminade and BYU.’ For me to come in and be negative or discouraging would be terrible on my part. It was a basketball game. I wish we would have won. We didn’t play well. I'm proud of this team and think this team will bounce back and respond.

"We're on the road to try to build something and you're going to have bumps in the road. This was one of those bumps."

Box Score