Grand Canyon sent to West Region as No. 14 seed in NCAA Tournament to face No. 3 Gonzaga

Grand Canyon's men's basketball team took its party that began Saturday night in Las Vegas at Orleans Arena with a WAC championship win over Southern Utah to GCU Arena on Sunday afternoon, where players and coaches got together with fans to find out where they're headed to play in the NCAA Tournament.

GCU (24-11), the 14th seed, will be playing No. 3 Gonzaga on Friday in Denver in the first round of the West Regional.

GCU coach Bryce Drew didn't want to have to face his brother Scott's Baylor team in the first round. But they'll both be in Denver during the weekend.

Still, this game against Gonzaga, hits Bryce Drew on a personal level. Gonzaga assistant coach Roger Powell was Drew's associate head coach at Vanderbilt five years ago.

"It's a little deeper for me," Drew said about facing the Bulldogs. "(Powell) was my associate head coach for many years at Vanderbilt. We just saw each other in Vegas. We talked on the phone this morning. It goes a lot deeper.

"It's a great opportunity to play in the NCAA Tournament. It's a blessing to be able to do that."

This has been an improbable ride for the Antelopes, who appeared to hit rock bottom here on Senior Night on Feb. 24 in a 65-54 loss to Seattle U.

That team scored the fewest first-half points (13) in the program's 10-year Division I history. They shot 33% from the field and 26% from the 3-point arc and fumbled the ball all over the court with 15 turnovers in a game that seemed to signal a quick end in sight to a season filled with potholes and injuries. It was as if they were never going to figure out how to play without star point guard Jovan Blacksher Jr., whose season ended on Jan. 5 at Sam Houston with a knee injury that required surgery to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament.

They were relying so much on guard Ray Harrison to carry them.

But that team is in the distant past.

This team, Drew's third at GCU, has gone 6-0 since, the longest winning streak of the season, and shot better than 50% in all four of its WAC Tournament games, playing together, everybody contributing, and the stars, Ray Harrison and Gabe McGlothan closing it out in a dominating 84-66 win over No. 2 seed Southern Utah in the championship game that punched the Lopes' ticket and started a stream of purple confetti pouring down on them at Orleans Arena as they basked in glory.

The streak started with a nearly two-hour players' only meeting in Utah two weeks ago the night before playing at Southern Utah, a team that hadn't lost a WAC game at home.

"We really kind of drew the line in the sand," said senior reserve guard Walter Ellis, who was clutch with his defense and 3-point shooting in four WAC tournament games in Las Vegas. "Our guys were too good to be letting games slip away like we did.

"That's why we have the utmost confidence in each other, and we're playing really loose basketball."

Drew is 2-0 in WAC championship games, after GCU had gone 0-2 in the WAC Tournament finals under Dan Majerle before Drew's arrival.

Two years ago, when the Lopes reached the NCAA (bubble) Tournament in Drew's first year leading the program, they came to Indianapolis as a 15 seed and lost to No. 2 Iowa 86-74 in the first round.

Last year, GCU lost a close WAC semifinal to New Mexico State, which ended up reaching the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

As the No. 5 seed in the WAC Tournament last week, GCU was the lowest seed from the WAC since Hawaii in 2001 to reach March Madness.

The Lopes are 6-0 in March, starting with the final regular-season road trip, after their enforcer, Yvan Ouedraogo, called for the players' only meeting, then sweeping Southern Utah and Utah Tech, finding out who they are rolling with it, never looking back.

GCU, under president Brian Mueller's leadership, envisioned itself as the next Gonzaga, a midmajor program emerging as a college basketball giant, since the Lopes transition from Division II to I 10 years ago. Now they get to play Gonzaga.

"If we want to be great, we've got to beat great," graduate guard Noah Baumann said. "Gonzaga the last couple of decades has been amazing. If we want to make a mark in the coming years, we've got to beat them. But we'll be prepared."

McGlothan and guard Chance McMillian both have experienced the NCAA Tournament. So has graduate guard Noah Baumann, who experienced the dance before at Georgia and USC.

"We hear all of our lives our entire life the whole big dance," Baumann said. "But as soon as you get there, it's just the game of basketball a little bit ramped up. If we just play the way we've been playing, we'll be all right. We just played four in five days. That's extremely tough. If we keep doing our stuff, we'll be all right."

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But it's not over. And they don't want to be one-and-done at the dance.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: GCU starts its second trip to NCAA Tournament in Denver