Since the final buzzer sounded on Grand Canyon's thrill ride last March in Spokane, Washington, everything with the Lopes has been about getting back to this night – a Saturday night WAC Tournament championship with 40 minutes of basketball putting an NCAA tournament berth on the line.
The Lopes tweaked the roster around heavy returns, toiled in the summer to mesh and improve and navigated a season with starters missing more games than last season to finish at their best again.

And the two-time defending champions of the WAC Tournament will need to be at that level to punch their fourth Big Dance ticket in five years under head coach
Bryce Drew. The best conference teams, GCU and Utah Valley, are the ones left standing for an 8:40 p.m. game at Orleans Arena on ESPN2.
The pair of 25-7 teams split the regular-season series with each home team winning, but they have not see each other since the Lopes won 75-57 at home Feb. 1. Since then, regular-season champion Utah Valley has won 10 consecutive games and that game marked the Wolverines' lone loss in their past 21 games.
"It's a blessing to be in the position that we're in," said GCU senior guard
Ray Harrison, who is looking to go 9-0 in three WAC Tournaments.
"Coach is going to have us prepared. We are going to be prepared. We're going to be ready."
Utah Valley has been consistently solid with a senior-less lineup lacking holes.
Junior 6-foot-5 guard Dominick Nelson unseated GCU's
Tyon Grant-Foster as WAC Player of the Year with 14.8 points per game. Sophomore Trevor Leonhardt is a pure point guard with the fourth-best assist-to-turnover ratio in the nation (3.46 to 1). Sophomore 6-foot-10 center Carter Welling, a UC Irvine transfer, blocks two shots per game and has 3-point shooting range. Sophomore guard Tanner Toolson stepped up with an 18-point semifinal and knocks down two 3s per game for a team that takes few 3s. Sophomore 6-foot-9 Osiris Grady is the unheralded glue starter with defense and rebounding.

Together, the Wolverines are the fourth-best shot-blocking team in the nation (5.9 per game) with a defense that holds teams to 41% shooting and 67.3 points per game.
The Lopes broke through on that in the last meeting with a balanced, efficient offense of four double-digit scorers and junior center
Duke Brennan's double-double.
Only St. John's and UC San Diego have a better defensive rating than GCU since Dec. 17.
"It was a tremendous defensive effort," Drew said of the Lopes' Friday night semifinal win against California Baptist. "That's the one thing. Offense can come and go, but defense has got to be consistent."

Offense has not come and go for senior power forward
JaKobe Coles, who is only getting better in his string of 16 consecutive double-digit scoring games. Coles posted the first back-to-back 20-point games of his career (24 vs. UT Arlington, 22 vs. California Baptist).
"JaKobe was fantastic the whole game, creating stuff for himself and others," Drew said. "Pretty incredible. Credit JaKobe and other guys for them blending so quicky with each other."
Coles is the only new GCU starter from last season's NCAA tournament second-round team, but he also went to the NCAA tournament last season and is looking for a deeper run to top off his career-best season in all categories.
"You want to have these opportunities to get to this point and make a championship and try to go on a championship run," Coles said. "So I look at it as good pressure, which makes me excited to play and want to get better and want to do it.
"Like I said all year, I don't see a lot of teams just beating us. They're gonna have to handle a lot of us."
The blend has been with Grant-Foster returning to the fold after being injured for nearly four weeks and getting only limited five-on-five work on two practice days before being reinserted into the starting lineup for the WAC Tournament.
He said the Lopes were just starting to click when he was hurt in mid-February.
"I feel like we still can do that now here with this next game," Grant-Foster said.