Grand Canyon opens WAC play with Houston Baptist


Grand Canyon Lopes (2-5, 0-0 WAC)	vs.	Houston Baptist Huskies (3-3, 0-1 WAC)
		Sunday, Oct. 1 at 7 p.m. MST
GCU Match Notes Media Guide		Game Notes Live Stats Live Video

The Grand Canyon men's soccer team opens up conference play on Sunday night, hosting Houston Baptist at GCU Stadium at 7 p.m. MST. Sunday's match begins a 10-game conference slate that starts and ends with home games in Phoenix.

Sunday's match will cap off a four-game homestand in which the Lopes have won 2 of 3. The home field advantage at GCU Stadium has been key as the Lopes improved to 3-1 at home with their most recent win over Oral Roberts. 2 of the 3 home victories on the year have come in dramatic overtime fashion.

GCU's defense has come up big in a pair of shutout home wins this season (vs. Evansville, Sept. 7; vs. Oral Roberts, Sept. 22). The most recent shutout win came last week. Jeremy Pollard came up with three key saves to keep the Golden Eagles off the board. Pollard was named the WAC's Defensive Player of the Week for his efforts.

In that win, Charlie Keating scored his first goal of the season on a header in the first few minutes of overtime. Keating got two chances at a header with the second finding the back of the net.

Grand Canyon, who has had several players banged up of late, had eight days between matches to recover.

This will be Houston Baptist's second conference match after taking a loss at UNLV to open its WAC schedule on Thursday evening, 3-1. The loss sent the Huskies to 3-3 on the year. Houston Baptist is one of a handful of men's soccer-specific WAC affiliate members alongside San José State, UNLV, Incarnate Word and Air Force.

HBU and GCU both opened their respective seasons with losses at the hands of Omaha, the only common opponent between the two teams to this point. The Huskies fell 1-0 while the Lopes lost 2-1 in overtime.

Last year when the two teams met, Grand Canyon topped HBU 3-2 in Houston. Niki Jackson recorded the hat trick including the game-winning score in the 87th minute. The Lopes are 4-1 all-time against Houston Baptist.

Following Sunday's match, the Lopes take to the road for 5 of their next 6 matches, all coming in conference play. Next weekend, GCU will face CSU Bakersfield and San José State on Friday and Sunday, respectively.

For more GCU men's soccer news, notes and numbers, click here to view this week's match notes and click here to view the media guide.

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Players Mentioned

Marco Afonso

Josh Drack

Damian German

Niki Jackson

Charlie Keating

Aidan McGlothan

Musa Morris Demos

Jeremy Pollard

Grand Canyon University Athletics