Hyndman announces 2017 schedule

PHOENIX - Head coach Schellas Hyndman and the Grand Canyon men's soccer program released their 2017 schedule on Tuesday for the first fully-eligible Division I season. The Lopes are set to play an 18-game regular season slate that includes matchups with four 2016 NCAA Tournament participants.

GCU will play half of its 18 games at GCU Stadium after finishing 5-3-1 in the facility's inaugural season last year. At the culmination of a 10-game WAC schedule, the Lopes look to qualify for the conference tournament in their first season of eligibility. The WAC Tournament is held at UNLV in early November with six of the conference's 11 teams qualifying.

"The whole goal is—we're going to be NCAA Tournament eligible but we're also going to be WAC Tournament eligible," Hyndman said. "Our objective is real simple: we'd like to have a winning record, we'd like to qualify for the WAC Tournament and we'd like to finish in the top three in the WAC. "

Headlining Grand Canyon's schedule are four NCAA Tournament teams: road games at Creighton and at Pacific; home games against CSU Northridge and UNLV. Creighton, UNLV and Pacific all won at least one game in the tournament last season.

"It was certainly our intention to schedule tough," Hyndman said. "Serving on the NCAA Selection Committee for 10 years, I saw the process. If you don't win your automatic bid, you've got to have a decent RPI. We have to go out and find good teams to play. We also want to get teams on our schedule that will come back and play us at home in the future. We want to establish a culture here that we are a legitimate team that competes for NCAA Tournaments."

The season gets off to a challenging start as Grand Canyon hits the road for the first three games of the year. First off, the Lopes play a pair of matches in Omaha, Neb. against Omaha and tournament-qualifying Creighton. GCU finishes off its stretch of three road games to begin the season with a date at Wisconsin.

The remaining non-conference schedule features home matches against Evansville in the home opener on Sep. 7 as well as versus UC Riverside, Cal State Northridge and Oral Roberts. The Lopes will also play a non-conference game on the road at Pacific.

"It is going to be a tough road trip. When we come back, we're going to be so happy to be in our home stadium competing in front of our fans," Hyndman said. "We're hoping to establish that winning mentality. When we get home and have those non-conference teams, it's going to be a way for us to establish our winning ways."

When the calendar turns to October, the Lopes will open up Western Athletic Conference play. GCU starts the WAC schedule with a home match against Houston Baptist. The Lopes will host conference foes Incarnate Word, Seattle U, Utah Valley and UNLV, while playing on the road at CSU Bakersfield, San José State, UTRGV, UMKC and Air Force. The final three games of the conference schedule will be at GCU Stadium as Grand Canyon plays three of the top four teams in last year's conference standings.

"Our conference is a very diverse group," Hyndman said. "Any team can beat anyone on any given day. But when you look at the traditional teams like Utah Valley, Seattle, UNLV – they're all really good teams last year that finished in the top three positions. Two years ago Seattle and Utah Valley both got into the NCAA Tournament."

The top six finishers in the conference are invited to the WAC Tournament in Las Vegas beginning on Nov. 9. Grand Canyon is eligible for tournament play for the first time this season.

"This team will be the best team we've had since I've been here," Hyndman concluded. "It will also be the deepest team we've had. We redshirted some players for this big year coming up. We're putting ourselves in a great position to put an experienced team on the field."

To view GCU's schedule in its entirety, click here.

Road trippin' 2k17. pic.twitter.com/SnE1ubSiIU
— GCU Men's Soccer (@GCU_MSoccer) May 30, 2017

Grand Canyon University Athletics

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