Lopes take on talented Tony Gwynn Legacy field

Saturday, February 24

(at USD) San Diego, Calif.

2 p.m.

Grand Canyon

Cal Poly

2/23/2018 5:01:00 PM | Baseball

Grand Canyon takes on Cal Poly, San Diego, San Diego State

By: Josh Hauser

San Diego, Calif. • Tony Gwynn Classic
	vs.
Grand Canyon Lopes (1-3, 0-0 WAC) GAME NOTES		Cal Poly (Notes) San Diego (Notes) San Diego State (Notes)

GAME 1 • Saturday, Feb. 24 • 2 p.m. MST
Live Stats • Cal Poly Audio
RHP [R-SR] Mike Lundin (0-1, 13.50) vs. LHP [SR] Trent Shelton (0-0, 1.50)

GAME 2 • Saturday, Feb. 24 • 7 p.m. MST
TheW.tv • Live Stats
RHP [JR] Jake Wong (0-0, 0.00) vs. LHP [SO] Chris Murphy (0-0, 9.00)

GAME 3 • Sunday, Feb. 25 • 3 p.m. MST
Live Stats • San Diego State Audio
LHP [SR] Jake Repavich (0-0, 13.50) vs. RHP [R-JR] Garrett Hill (1-0, 0.00)

GCU heads out on to the road for the first time in 2018, taking on three different teams as part of the Tony Gwynn Legacy tournament.

A talented tournament field also features the likes of Arkansas, Arizona and Michigan, but the Lopes will take on Cal Poly, San Diego and San Diego State. All seven of the tournament's schools were either ranked or received votes in Collegiate Baseball Newspaper's preseason top 40.

AT-A-GLANCE

Grand Canyon takes to the road for the first time this season to participate in the Tony Gwynn Classic.
The Lopes have previously matched up against all three opponents, but it will be the first meeting with San Diego since 1994 and first with San Diego State since 1998.
GCU was one of just two teams to defeat a D1Baseball Top-10 team last weekend. Top-10 teams went 30-2.
After six scoreless innings against No. 7 TCU on Opening Night, RHP Jake Wong won his third career WAC Pitcher of the Week honor.
Over Opening Weekend, 7,895 fans filed into the GCU's new ballpark. GCU ranks 18th for Opening Weekend average attendance (2,632) and is the only school west of Texas to average over 2,500. All three games rank in the program's top five, including Friday night's shattering of the previous all-time record with 3,749 fans.
GCU is picked to win the WAC by all major national publications as well as the conference's head coaches. Ian Evans (Sr., 1B), Austin Bull (Jr., 2B) and Jake Wong (Jr., SP) were all named to the Preseason All-WAC team.
The Lopes are coming off of a 2017 WAC Regular Season Championship in what was their final season of transition and postseason ineligibility. GCU went 20-4 in conference play, the top winning percentage the WAC has seen since eventual national champion, Rice, went 25-5 in 2003.
GCU was one of just four schools in 2017 to win every conference series (Oregon State, North Carolina, Long Beach State).

SCOUTING

CAL POLY: Saturday's first matchup against Cal Poly will pin two Pepperdine alums against one another in Mustangs' head coach Larry Lee and GCU's Andy Stankiewicz. The Lopes and Mustangs met six combined times between the 2015 and 2016 seasons with GCU claiming five of the games. Cal Poly opened the 2018 season in Surprise, Ariz., beating Gonzaga in the opener before losing three straight to New Mexico, Oregon State and Gonzaga. Last season, the Mustangs took two of three games and finished higher in the conference standings than eventual College World Series qualifier, Cal State Fullerton.
SAN DIEGO: The Toreros opened the season by splitting two with Cal, splitting two with Cincinnati, and topping cross-town rival San Diego State. Former GCU pitching coach Nathan Choate is now the pitching coach at USD. Despite not playing since 1994, a high level of familiarity exists between the two programs as five summer league teams had both GCU and USD players on their respective rosters.
SAN DIEGO STATE: The Lopes and Aztecs will meet for the first time since 1998. SDSU opened this season with a home sweep of UC Santa Barbara before falling to San Diego. In 2017, San Diego State entered the Mountain West Conference tournament seeded No. 2 and upset No. 1-seeded New Mexico to advance to the NCAA Tournament. The Aztecs landed in the Long Beach Regional where they were eventually eliminated following two losses to the host Dirtbags.

LAST TIME OUT

GCU fell to Washington State in mid-week action, erasing a 4-1 deficit to tie before allowing a ninth-inning run.
The Lopes took the series finale from No. 4/7 TCU with a three-run 12th inning to walk off.