Close clash hands GCU 2nd straight road loss

Saturday, January 22

Huntsville, Texas

1 p.m. (MST)

Grand Canyon

14-4,4-2WAC

Sam Houston

12-9,7-1WAC

Grand Canyon

Sam Houston

1/22/2022 9:21:00 AM | Men's Basketball, Paul Coro

Box Score Postgame - Drew Photo Gallery

Lopes contain top scorers; Sam Houston moves to 7-1 in WAC

By: Paul Coro

HUNTSVILLE, Texas – Few teams will defend Sam Houston's top scorers, Savion Flagg and Demarkus Lampley, as well as Grand Canyon did Saturday.

But few teams come away from Bernard G. Johnson Coliseum with a win either. The Lopes held the Bearkats to 32.8% shooting and limited Flagg and Lampley to 15 points less than their cumulative season average, but extending Sam Houston to the buzzer still left GCU on the short side of a 58-56 conference loss.

Lopes head coach Bryce Drew, cleared from health and safety protocols, arrived about an hour prior to game time to rejoin his team, which was coming off a 71-46 loss at Stephen F. Austin on Thursday. GCU (14-4, 5-2 WAC) looked more like the team that went six weeks without losing when it built a 27-18 lead late in the first half, but suffered a second straight loss in which the opponent shot less than 40%.

"I was really proud of our guys," Drew said. "We competed. We're banged up. It's been a long trip. We've had so many distractions these last three, four days. We've got two players out (Taeshon Cherry and Jayden Stone) that have been playing really well for us lately. It hurt our rotation. I was really proud of the effort and the fight. We had that one lapse for five minutes at the start of the second half and that lapse gave them the momentum. We fought back still, though, and took the lead.

"This game and this effort they gave tonight is going to help us later in the year."

Graduate forward Sean Miller-Moore led the Lopes effort to keep Flagg, a national top-20 scorer, to 6-for-19 shooting from the field and 0-for-4 work on 3-pointers. But the Bearkats (12-9, 7-1 WAC) overcame their offensive struggles to move to 72-11 at home over the past six seasons.

"Collectively, it was a great team effort," Drew said. "We gave up too many offensive rebounds (15), but I really liked how hard our guys played."

GCU had its inefficiencies, shooting 38.9% from the field and losing its second-half lead when Sam Houston went on an 11-0 run for its largest lead, 51-43, with 8:10 remaining in the game. The Lopes clawed back by holding the Bearkats without a field goal for five minutes. But even as Flagg did not score for the final 6:40 of the game, Sam Houston was able to survive after GCU pulled even on junior guard Jovan Blacksher Jr.'s baseline drive for a 54-54 tie with 1:54 remaining.

After converting one of two free throws with 20.5 seconds remaining, Sam Houston led 58-56 but had only been called for three fouls in the half. The Bearkats used two of its fouls to give, taking the clock down to 3.6 seconds.

With the Lopes inbounding on the right sideline, Miller-Moore passed to graduate guard Holland Woods II, who split two defenders and bounced into open space for a 17-foot jumper that missed off the back rim at the buzzer.

"This is one of the one of the biggest wins in our program history because we just never have been in a league like this before and they're really good and very well-coached," said Sam Houston head coach Jason Hooten, whose team has won five consecutive games to move into second place in the WAC. "Just a really good basketball team that we beat today."

Blacksher (6 for 17) and Woods (3 for 13) shot a combined 30% from the field but combined for only turnovers despite each playing 37 minutes. Going without reserves Taeshon Cherry (ankle) and Jayden Stone (ill), GCU mainly used a seven-man rotation with junior Gabe McGlothan logging 38 minutes as the only available stretch power forward.

The Lopes allowed 15 offensive rebounds to help give Sam Houston 10 more field goal attempts, but the Bearkats only converted the boards into eight second-chance points. Flagg went 6 for 19 from the field and Lampley was 1 for 8 but the Lopes offense followed up the program's second-lowest scoring Division I-era game on Thursday (46 points) with a 24-point second half on Saturday.

Blacksher broke DeWayne Russell's Divison I-era program record for career steals with two swipes on Saturday, giving him 121 in three seasons. It was Woods' second steal that fed a rally and a fastbreak with Miller-Moore's putback, but it was a rare moment in Sam Houston's seven-turnover game.

Part of GCU's success came in a 2-3 zone with senior power forward Dima Zdor patrolling the back middle. Zdor became the only Lopes player besides Oscar Frayer to block three shots in consecutive Division I-era games. Another power forward, junior Yvan Ouedraogo, led GCU's rebounding with nine boards in 25 minutes.

GCU has a week of preparation for next Saturday's game at New Mexico State (16-3, 6-1 WAC), which won Saturday at Stephen F. Austin.

"We've got to get healthy first," Drew said. "We've got some guys playing who are banged up and aren't who they were before they came on this trip.

"We weren't sharp. We didn't play great. We weren't who we are. But their grit and their toughness allowed us to stay in the game and have a chance to win."

Saturday's loss marked the end of a trying week for Drew, who watched his team from Phoenix as he went through health and safety protocols before he could return just before tip-off Saturday.

"It's hard," Drew said. "It's so hard watching. What's really hard is you work so hard all summer. You work so hard in the fall. You get ready for league games and then you have all this disruption a week before such a big road trip for us. That's why I'm proud of the guys. Even though we didn't win, the effort they gave and the heart they gave to be in position to win is going to help us somehwere along the line this year."