Completed Event: Men's Basketball at Baylor on October 10, 2025 , Loss , 74, to, 79
M Basketball
at Baylor
L 74-79
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Grand Canyon University Athletics
GCU president, Saint Mary's coach linked long ago
3/22/2024 6:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball, Paul Coro
Mueller coached basketball with Bennett's father, Tom, at Mesa CC from 1987-90
SPOKANE, Wash. – Grand Canyon University President Brian Mueller and his wife, Paula, were on a Sunday drive from Las Vegas to Phoenix following his Lopes' WAC Tournament championship when the NCAA Selection Show unveiled his beloved team's next monumental step.
Of the other 361 Division I men's basketball programs and the 67 other NCAA tournament qualifiers, the Muellers learned that the first-round matchup was going to be a reunion with a longtime friend.
Friday night's GCU-Saint Mary's game is just another talking point in the longstanding basketball relationship between Mueller and the Bennett basketball family, which includes Gaels 23-year head coach Randy Bennett.
"Our mouths just went, 'Oh my gosh,' " Mueller said of learning of the matchup. "It's a small world."
The basketball world can be even smaller, as evidenced by how the Muellers first came to know the Bennetts.
In 1987, Mueller left his job as professor and three-year men's basketball head coach for his alma mater, tiny Concordia College in Seward, Nebraska, to move his family to Paula's hometown, Phoenix. In a sign of his transformative abilities to come, Mueller had taken the NAIA program from an eight-win debut season to a 19-win final season.
Mesa Community College head coach Tom Bennett, Randy's father, already had built a junior college basketball power and heard about Mueller's move to the Valley. Bennett offered an assistant coach position to Mueller, who initially planned to obtain a doctoral degree at Arizona State and return to teaching. They spent the next three seasons together, culminating with a 32-3 season and national tournament run in 1989-90 with point guard Mike Brown, the current Sacramento Kings head coach.
"Randy's dad and I have been friends ever since that time," Mueller said while watching GCU's open practice Thursday at Spokane Arena. "We talk frequently. Tom's a basketball legend in Arizona. He's probably as respected of a guy as there is in Arizona for what we did at Mesa Community College in those couple decades. It was an amazing program."
Tom Bennett coached 711 wins in 33 years of coaching high school and junior college basketball in Arizona, including a 2003 state championship at Gilbert High School. At MCC, he went 442-164 and was inducted into the National Junior College Athletic Association Hall of Fame.
Mueller's life pivoted into higher education with Apollo Education Group, the parent company of University of Phoenix, where he rose through the ranks to executive positions and led a transformation in online education.
When Mueller's group moved to resuscitate GCU, a basketball vision became part of the plan to grow the university status and the campus experience. He knew just who to call for advice with Randy Bennett well established at Saint Mary's, where he is the sixth-longest tenured coach in Division I men's basketball.
"When we started building what we thought was going to be a powerhouse program, we touched base again and we talk a couple times a year about college basketball, what they're doing there and what we're doing at Grand Canyon," Mueller said. "I did ask him a lot. When we hired Coach (Dan) Majerle, he gave us some help about what somebody coming from the NBA into college basketball should think about and what we should think about. He helped us hire an assistant coach, Todd Lee. It's been a good relationship for years."
Bennett's Gaels and Mueller's Lopes met once previously in March 2016, when Saint Mary's won 73-64 in Moraga, California. A planned return game in Phoenix never materialized.
"Whatever he's touched has turned to gold." Randy Bennett said. "That's the same as Grand Canyon University and the same as Grand Canyon University sports programs and especially their men's basketball. I remember talking to him way back then, and that was the goal – to have a first-class NCAA tournament men's basketball program, and they have one. It's pretty cool.
"Up until this point and watching that thing grow has been fun for me. Shoot, I was calling it eight years ago. I said, 'They're going to get good. They're going to get real good.' I told our league office (West Coast Conference) the whole deal and here they are, and now we're playing them."
Mueller said Saint Mary's is one of the best college basketball stories outside of GCU, given the size of the university and its resources. This is the Gaels' third consecutive year as a No. 5 seed in the NCAA tournament, which they have reached in 10 of the past 17 years.
But the Lopes are expected to turn Spokane Arena's crowd on the Gaels, by virtue of local Gonzaga fans rooting against rival Saint Mary's and GCU's efforts to bring as many Havocs from its famed student section as possible.
"Our students have been such a big part of this program all year long," Mueller said. "We can't just leave them behind when this happens. We got the resources together and got them on planes and they'll be up here. We want to continue that tradition. They put so much into it all year and you can't just all of a sudden say, 'Well, goodbye.'
"People wonder why we get such incredible student support at the university. Other universities can't generate the same level of enthusiasm. You have to put the students as a priority. If you make them a priority and you turn a lot of the responsibility over to them to build the student section, that relationship gets built with the university and administration and you get the loyalty that we get. People want to say we pay them or give them academic credit. None of that is true. It's all excuses because universities don't build relationships with students that engender that kind of loyalty."
Of the other 361 Division I men's basketball programs and the 67 other NCAA tournament qualifiers, the Muellers learned that the first-round matchup was going to be a reunion with a longtime friend.
Friday night's GCU-Saint Mary's game is just another talking point in the longstanding basketball relationship between Mueller and the Bennett basketball family, which includes Gaels 23-year head coach Randy Bennett.
"Our mouths just went, 'Oh my gosh,' " Mueller said of learning of the matchup. "It's a small world."The basketball world can be even smaller, as evidenced by how the Muellers first came to know the Bennetts.
In 1987, Mueller left his job as professor and three-year men's basketball head coach for his alma mater, tiny Concordia College in Seward, Nebraska, to move his family to Paula's hometown, Phoenix. In a sign of his transformative abilities to come, Mueller had taken the NAIA program from an eight-win debut season to a 19-win final season.
Mesa Community College head coach Tom Bennett, Randy's father, already had built a junior college basketball power and heard about Mueller's move to the Valley. Bennett offered an assistant coach position to Mueller, who initially planned to obtain a doctoral degree at Arizona State and return to teaching. They spent the next three seasons together, culminating with a 32-3 season and national tournament run in 1989-90 with point guard Mike Brown, the current Sacramento Kings head coach.
"Randy's dad and I have been friends ever since that time," Mueller said while watching GCU's open practice Thursday at Spokane Arena. "We talk frequently. Tom's a basketball legend in Arizona. He's probably as respected of a guy as there is in Arizona for what we did at Mesa Community College in those couple decades. It was an amazing program."
Tom Bennett coached 711 wins in 33 years of coaching high school and junior college basketball in Arizona, including a 2003 state championship at Gilbert High School. At MCC, he went 442-164 and was inducted into the National Junior College Athletic Association Hall of Fame.
Mueller's life pivoted into higher education with Apollo Education Group, the parent company of University of Phoenix, where he rose through the ranks to executive positions and led a transformation in online education.
When Mueller's group moved to resuscitate GCU, a basketball vision became part of the plan to grow the university status and the campus experience. He knew just who to call for advice with Randy Bennett well established at Saint Mary's, where he is the sixth-longest tenured coach in Division I men's basketball.
"When we started building what we thought was going to be a powerhouse program, we touched base again and we talk a couple times a year about college basketball, what they're doing there and what we're doing at Grand Canyon," Mueller said. "I did ask him a lot. When we hired Coach (Dan) Majerle, he gave us some help about what somebody coming from the NBA into college basketball should think about and what we should think about. He helped us hire an assistant coach, Todd Lee. It's been a good relationship for years."
Bennett's Gaels and Mueller's Lopes met once previously in March 2016, when Saint Mary's won 73-64 in Moraga, California. A planned return game in Phoenix never materialized."Whatever he's touched has turned to gold." Randy Bennett said. "That's the same as Grand Canyon University and the same as Grand Canyon University sports programs and especially their men's basketball. I remember talking to him way back then, and that was the goal – to have a first-class NCAA tournament men's basketball program, and they have one. It's pretty cool.
"Up until this point and watching that thing grow has been fun for me. Shoot, I was calling it eight years ago. I said, 'They're going to get good. They're going to get real good.' I told our league office (West Coast Conference) the whole deal and here they are, and now we're playing them."
Mueller said Saint Mary's is one of the best college basketball stories outside of GCU, given the size of the university and its resources. This is the Gaels' third consecutive year as a No. 5 seed in the NCAA tournament, which they have reached in 10 of the past 17 years.
But the Lopes are expected to turn Spokane Arena's crowd on the Gaels, by virtue of local Gonzaga fans rooting against rival Saint Mary's and GCU's efforts to bring as many Havocs from its famed student section as possible."Our students have been such a big part of this program all year long," Mueller said. "We can't just leave them behind when this happens. We got the resources together and got them on planes and they'll be up here. We want to continue that tradition. They put so much into it all year and you can't just all of a sudden say, 'Well, goodbye.'
"People wonder why we get such incredible student support at the university. Other universities can't generate the same level of enthusiasm. You have to put the students as a priority. If you make them a priority and you turn a lot of the responsibility over to them to build the student section, that relationship gets built with the university and administration and you get the loyalty that we get. People want to say we pay them or give them academic credit. None of that is true. It's all excuses because universities don't build relationships with students that engender that kind of loyalty."
Introducing your @WCCsports Coach of the Year: 𝐑𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐲 𝐁𝐞𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐭 🫡#GaelsRise pic.twitter.com/6tUMij8ArN
— Saint Mary's Hoops (@saintmaryshoops) March 5, 2024
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