Scoring surge overcomes 13-point hole in win

Sunday, February 7

Phoenix, Ariz.

11 a.m.

Grand Canyon

UT Rio Grande Valley

Photo by: Elizabeth Tinajero

2/7/2021 2:42:00 PM | Women's Basketball, Paul Coro

Box Score Photo Gallery

GCU drops 50-point 2nd half with Jackson's 14-point 3rd quarter

By: Paul Coro

The Grand Canyon women's basketball team holds daily practices in the afternoon. That is when the Lopes started executing like a practice Sunday.

Recovering from an 11 a.m. tip-off's slow start, GCU demolished UT Rio Grande Valley with a 50-point second half on the way to an 83-73 victory at GCU Arena.

After putting an early 16-0 run on UTRGV in the series' first game Saturday, the Lopes gave up a 15-0 first-quarter run Sunday before they found traction with a buzzer-beating, half-court shot by junior guard Laura Piera.

That helped GCU (13-3, 5-1 WAC) find its offensive mix of opportunistic layups and drives and a continuation of its improved 3-point shooting. The Lopes still trailed 39-33 at halftime before overwhelming the Vaqueros with the second half's first nine points in 1:43 and GCU senior guard Ny'Dajah Jackson scoring 10 points on four consecutive possessions.

"We just had to have energy," said Jackson, who scored 14 of the Lopes' 30 third-quarter points. "That was the whole core of it. We were kind of flat in the first half so the talk was have energy and compete.

"I am programmed to shoot and be all over the floor. I'm the leader so I have to do more than just one thing and just be flying everywhere for the team."

GCU guard Tiarra Brown also embodied that release of pent-up energy on the way to the team's fourth consecutive win. Foul trouble put Brown on the bench for the first half's final seven minutes. When the second half started, Brown exploded like a rocket with a putback score, backcourt steal and layup assist in the first 50 seconds.

"She was probably sitting there with restless leg syndrome, just ready to hop in and chomping at the bit," GCU head coach Molly Miller said. "We knew we could go to her right away and she'd have a lot of energy. We talked about her exploding up toward the rim. She was leaving them short. She did a great job of hearing that, being coachable and then going to execute on the floor."

The momentum shift was demonstrated on the boards, where GCU went from getting outrebounded 20-14 in the first half (8-6 on the offensive glass) to beating UTRGV 22-13 on the boards in the second half (10-3 on the offensive glass).

And that was with less frequent misses to gather. After a 5-for-20 shooting start, the Lopes went 23 for 43 (53.5%) from the field for the remainder of the game. GCU has turned around its 3-point shooting from 26% in the first 13 games to 43% in the past three games.

"We definitely didn't get in a groove until the second half," Miller said. "It was just a little bit of a wake-up call for us, like, 'Why reinvent the wheel?' What we were doing offensively and movement-wise was working yesterday so we just got back to basics of cutting harder and rebounding harder."

The Lopes maintained their national lead for opponent turnovers per game. UTRGV committed 26 on Saturday and 23 on Sunday to put the GCU opponent average at 26.1 per game, a full turnover ahead of second-place San Diego.

The Lopes' 13-3 record puts it in the national top 35 for winning percentage, but the conference standard is high. GCU is chasing undefeated California Baptist (16-0, 8-0 WAC), which also is its next scheduled opponent on the road.

The Lopes make no secret of a WAC title being their big-picture goal, but they will not get there without pulling out wins like they did Sunday. A day after beating UTRGV by 22, GCU shook off a 13-point deficit to outscore the Vaqueros 74-51 for the remainder of the game.

"This win's almost a little more gratifying because it's a hard win," Miller said. "You go through some adversity and you want to see how your team responds when they're on their backs. For us, I think it was a good thing to get through and see the two different types of wins. How do you handle winning when you're up by a lot? And how do you handle adversity when you have to come from behind?"