Grand Canyon basketball keeps WAC regular-season title hopes alive with win at Seattle U

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Grand Canyon kept its WAC regular-season title hopes alive Saturday night, hanging on for a 63-60 win at Seattle U.

GCU (22-6, 12-2) trails first-place Utah Valley (21-7, 13-1) by one game with two games remaining before the WAC Tournament starts in Las Vegas. The two teams split their meetings this year. Utah Valley finishes in Texas with games against Abilene Christian and Tarleton State.

The Lopes finish at home Thursday night against Utah Tech before traveling to play Abilene Christian on Saturday.

Center Duke Brennan, bouncing back from an off-shooting game on Thursday against UT Arlington, had 18 points and 12 rebounds, his eighth double-double of the season.

But the Lopes needed two free throws by Makaih Williams with nine seconds left and a great defensive play by JaKobe Coles to get his hand on the ball on an errant 3-point try at the end by the Redhawks (11-17, 6-8) to secure their 16th win in their last 18 games.

GCU had one of its best halves of the season with Coles scoring all of his 13 points to stake a 37-23 lead. He also has 12 rebounds.

But in the second half, the Lopes were outscored 37-26 with turnovers again plaguing them. GCU made 16 turnovers in the game.

The Redhawks scored 18 points off of turnovers.

But, in the end, it was a breakthrough for GCU, which won at Seattle U for the first time in five years.

“I’m really proud of the guys,” coach Byrce Drew said in the GCU postgame radio interview. “It’s a really tough place to play. It was motivation. We lost two close games here the last two times. The guys were really determined.

“They had to overcome a lot of adversity. We basically gave them six points on two technicals, then fouling on a missed free throw. But thankful we won. Some learning things here that hopefully we can get better at for next week.”

Brennan played only eight minutes in the first half due to foul trouble. He picked up his first foul on the opening jump ball.

But Brennan turned it on in the second half with 10 points and nine rebounds.

“I’ve…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/article/grand-canyon-basketball-keeps-wac-171339026.html

Author : AZCentral | The Arizona Republic

Publish date : 2025-03-02 17:13:00

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