Unbeaten Grand Canyon travels to Louisville

The unbeaten Grand Canyon men's basketball team hits the road for the first time this season as they take on the No. 22 Louisville Cardinals on Saturday, Dec. 5 at 10 a.m. MT at the KFC Yum! Center. GCU is looking for their seventh straight win to start the season, which would be their ninth best start to a season in school history.

The Lopes will be facing their toughest test of the season with the nationally ranked Cardinals, who are coming off a tough 71-67 loss to No. 3 Michigan State on Wednesday night. Despite the loss, Rick Pintino's Cardinals still rank as the top ranking team in the country in scoring defense, only giving up 51.2 points per game. They also are the top team in the country in scoring margin with a +33.6 margin. Louisville has been led by graduate transfer Damion Lee who came to the Cardinals from Drexel. The Baltimore, Md. native is averaging 18.3 points per game. Louisville will be the second opponent for the the Lopes in the 2015-16 season that qualified for the NCAA Tournament a year ago. The Cardinals advanced all the way to the Elite Eight before falling to Michigan State.

"I watched (Louisville) on TV the other day and they're really good and that's a tough place to play," Lopes head coach Dan Majerle said. "We're just going to go in there and play our game, play as hard as we can and give it our best shot and whatever happens, happens. You never know. You don't win games on paper. You've got to go out there and play. I know they're talented, they're very good."

The Antelopes currently stand as one of 18 teams in the country without a loss. They enter Saturday's game fresh off a thrilling 75-72 victory over Central Michigan. Gerard Martin led the Lopes with a career-high 17 points on 6-of-8 shooting including hitting 5-of-6 from behind the arc. De'Andre Davis also contributed 17 points, 5 rebounds and 3 assists off the bench and Grandy Glaze added 13 points and led the Lopes with 6 rebounds.

"What a beautiful win for our guys," Majerle said after the game. "They battled. To play and have Joshua Braun and DeWayne Russell, our two best players, to have the game they had--they were 2-for-15, missing free throws, turning the ball over--to be able to step up and win a game against a good team, says a lot about our program and where we've come and how far we've come. I told them we had six home games, and we won all six of them. It's pretty amazing. Couldn't be prouder of our guys to stay focused. "

Grand Canyon won the rebounding battle 37-29. They have held the rebounding edge in all six games so far this season, after struggling to have that presence inside a year ago. Glaze currently ranks second in the WAC in rebounding while the Lopes also rank second in rebounding as a team. Their defense has also been a big improvement over a year ago. Currently, the Lopes rank first in the WAC as a team in both opposing field goal percentage (.375) and opposing 3-point field goal percentage (.283) while only allowing a conference-best 62.2 points per game.

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Players Mentioned

Joshua Braun

De'Andre Davis

Grandy Glaze

Gerard Martin

DeWayne Russell

Grand Canyon University Athletics