Completed Event: Men's Basketball at Wyoming on December 20, 2025 , Win , 82, to, 70
M Basketball
at Wyoming
W 82-70
Grand Canyon University Athletics
Photo by: David Kadlubowski
Lopes ready to rally for 1st-place finish
2/28/2024 10:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball, Paul Coro
GCU enters final home week with 1/2-game WAC lead on Tarleton State
Thursday, Feb. 29 | 7 p.m. | Global Credit Union Arena | Phoenix, Ariz. |
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UT RIO GRANDE VALLEY
VAQUEROS (6-21, 2-14 WAC) |
at | GRAND CANYON LOPES (22-4, 12-3 WAC) |
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| WATCH: FOX 10 Xtra (Ch. 45, Cable 9), ESPN+ | LISTEN: 1580 The Fanatic | STATS: View | ||||
The volume and intensity levels inside Global Credit Union Arena returned this week, and it was long before the Havocs will fill the east side of Global Credit Union Arena again Thursday night.
With the sting of two road losses putting their WAC lead at a precarious half-game, the Lopes (24-4, 14-3 WAC) turned up practices with a conference championship on the line in their final three regular-season home games:
- a 7 p.m. Thursday home game against UT Rio Grande Valley
- an 8 p.m. Saturday nationally televised home game against Stephen F. Austin
- the regular-season finale at California Baptist next Saturday
Inside the arena, the practices played out like a title was on the line daily. Crowd noise was piped in. Coaches, whether celebratory or corrective, were boisterous. Players, feeling fresh and practicing hard, communicated loudly during action and after winning plays.
"It's been good, but the game is what matters," GCU head coach Bryce Drew said."Guys have to step up and do it in the game. These guys have been around, so they know what it takes to win. Now, it's a decision to carry over our practices to the game."
GCU led each loss last week entering the final minute of that games the opponents cumulatively shot 76 free throws to the Lopes' 31. Tennessee State is the only other team in the nation with a winning record to have an opponent shoot at least 36 free throws in consecutive games.
"If that doesn't happen, we might be 26-2 right now," said Drew, whose team ranks fifth nationally for free throws made per game.
"It was really good for us to feel that pressure, especially going into the conference tournament. We haven't really had to face any adversity all year. It's good to face some adversity to make us better. We have to be able to respond and get better from it."
On Saturday, the Lopes allowed Abilene Christian to grab 16 offensive rebounds, a GCU opponent season high that negated holding the Wildcats to 38% shooting from the field. Drew said that six of those boards went out of bounds off Lopes players' hands.
The first consecutive losses since January 2023 dropped GCU to No. 58 in Tuesday's NET ranking.
"The team is still very hopeful," Lopes graduate power forward Gabe McGlothan said. "Instead of a lot of people looking at it as falling apart, it's just falling into place.
"There are a lot of things winning can hide sometimes. Good is the enemy of great. A couple of losses helped tune us up."
This team had not experienced consecutive losses, and both defeats were decided in the last minute. It snapped a seven-game winning streak in which GCU had won four of the games by seven points or fewer.
With a 14-0 record at Global Credit Union Arena this season, the Lopes are two wins away from the program's first perfect home season since 1991-92 (16-0).
"Coach was real intense on us to fix some of the details and the mistakes that we made this past weekend," said GCU graduate forward Lok Wur, who is averaging 10.6 points off the bench in the past seven games. "We definitely need these last two games to finish strong."
Lope tracks
- GCU's 24-4 record is tied for the eighth-best winning percentage in the nation.
- McGlothan ranks ninth in GCU career scoring with 1,291 points, which is 22 behind eighth-place Chad Briscoe.
- Graduate point guard Jovan Blacksher Jr. ranks seventh in GCU career scoring with 1,314 points, which is 59 behind sixth-place Doug Baker.
- Blacksher also ranks third in GCU career assists with 422, one behind DeWayne Russell for second and 33 behind Craig Russell's record.
- Junior guard Ray Harrison ranks 18th nationally for career scoring average (16.5) among active Division I players.
- Senior guard Tyon Grant-Foster ranks 20th nationally for free throws made (148) and 50th for points per game (19.0).
- The Lopes' 14-game winning streak from Nov. 25 to Jan. 18 is tied for the third longest in the nation this season. It was the Lopes' longest winning streak since 1978-79.
- The Lopes rank in the national top 25 for free throws made per game (fifth, 18.8, blocks per game (18th, 5.1) and scoring margin (21st, plus-11.8 per game).
- UT Rio Grande Valley ranks seventh nationally with 25 free throw attempts per game but only makes 70.1% of them (No. 246 rank).
- The Vaqueros ranks 27th in the nation with 15 opponent turnovers per game, averaging 8.3 of them on steals.
- UTRGV allows 80.1 points per game, the 12th-highest average in the nation.
WAC Resume Seeding System (updated Feb. 25) |
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| Rank | Team | Record (WAC only) | WAC points |
| 1. | GCU | 24-4 (14-3) | 7.52 |
| 2. | Tarleton State | 20-7 (13-3) | 3.66 |
| 3. | Seattle U | 18-10 (11-6) | 1.18 |
| 4. | UT Arlington | 15-13 (10-7) | -0.96 |
| 5. | Utah Valley | 14-14 (9-8) | -1.49 |
| 6. | Stephen F. Austin | 14-13 (7-9) | -2.29 |
| 7. | California Baptist | 14-13 (7-9) | -3.21 |
| 8. | Abilene Christian | 12-15 (7-9) | -3.28 |
| 9. | Utah Tech | 10-17 (6-10) | -4.83 |
| 10. | Southern Utah | 9-18 (4-12) | -6.42 |
| 11. | UT Rio Grande Valley | 6-21 (2-14) | -9.51 |
The WAC Resume Seeding System will determine seeding for the eight-team WAC Tournament. The top two seeds will receive first- and second-round byes. The third and fourth seeds will receive first-round byes.
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