Completed Event: Men's Basketball at UNLV on February 7, 2026 , Loss , 78, to, 80
M Basketball
at UNLV
L 78-80
Grand Canyon University Athletics
Insider: Lopes to face Valpo at Jam
5/13/2019 11:08:00 AM | Men's Basketball, Paul Coro, Lopes Insider Blog
GCU to play U.S. Virgin Islands tourney opener
When the U.S. Virgin Islands Paradise Jam tips off in November, so will Grand Canyon.
GCU will play in the eight-team tournament's first game, matching up with nine-time NCAA tournament qualifier Valparaiso in a Nov. 22 game at the University of the Virgin Islands Sport and Fitness Center in St. Thomas.
Coming off four consecutive seasons of at least 20 wins, the Lopes will face a Valparaiso team that went 15-18 last season but has the recent success of a 2017 Horizon League regular-season championship and 2013 and 2015 NCAA tournament trips.
The Crusaders lost two of their starters from last season but return sophomore 6-foot-3 guard Javon Freeman, who averaged 11.0 points to rank fourth in program history for freshman scoring, and senior 6-7 guard Ryan Fazekas, who averaged 11.8 points with 43.2 percent 3-point shooting. Valparaiso's leading 2018-19 scorer, center Derrik Smits, is transferring to Butler.
Valparaiso is in its third season under head coach Matt Lottich, a former Stanford player who also spent three seasons as a Crusaders assistant before taking the helm in 2016.The Paradise Jam field includes two teams, Nevada and Cincinnati, who reached the 2018 and 2019 NCAA tourneys. The GCU-Valparaiso winner will match up with the Fordham-Nevada winner in a Nov. 24 semifinal. The Lopes faced the Wolf Pack the past two years, playing an exhibition game at Nevada in 2017 and giving a full-game challenge to then-No. 6 Nevada last season in the Jerry Colangelo Classic in Phoenix before falling 74-66.
The Wolf Pack finished 29-5 with an all-senior lineup and is now led by head coach Steve Alford, who replaced Eric Musselman after his departure for Arkansas.
The Lopes will return four of five starters from last season's team, including leading scorers Carlos Johnson and Alessandro Lever.
On the other side of the Paradise Jam bracket, Cincinnati (28-7 last season) will have a first-round matchup with Illinois State, which has posted eight consecutive winning seasons, and Western Kentucky returns four double-digit scorers from a 20-14 team to face Bowling Green (22-12 last season) in the first round.
All Paradise Jam games will stream on FloHoops.com. Each team is guaranteed three games in the tournament with losing teams going to a consolation bracket. Kansas State defeated Missouri for last year's tournament championship.
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