The basketball season began with Grand Canyon being the mystery wrapped in the Mountain West riddle.
Only games could begin to unveil who the Lopes were at a new conference level, and the second half of GCU’s Mountain West season starts Tuesday night against Air Force with more wonder ahead in a tight championship race.
The Lopes’ vision was slow to unveil when 2026 began with a home loss to Colorado State, but a 6-2 conference record since then has put GCU in the thick of a Mountain West regular-season championship race with five teams separated by one loss.
“We’ve learned a lot in these 10 games – a lot about the league and the style of play,” GCU head coach Bryce Drew said. “Our players have learned a lot with the physicality and what it takes on a nightly basis to be prepared and ready to go for these games. There’s still a long road ahead, and there’s a lot of basketball left to be played.”
Fitting right in
In October when conjecture was knowledge, Mountain West coaches cumulatively predicted GCU to be a fourth-place team in the conference. The Lopes are actually in fifth place at their conference halfway pole, but it can still feel as if they are exceeding expectations for how quickly they assimilated to one of the nation’s top six men’s basketball conferences.
GCU has put a pair of 17-point blowouts on Boise State, which was picked to finish third in the Mountain West as a program that averaged 25 wins over the previous four seasons. The Lopes knocked off Utah State when it was No. 23 in the nation and followed it up by improving its all-time home record against San Diego State to 3-0.
In road Mountain West play, GCU is 3-2 with oh-so-close regrets from that mark being 4-1 if any one of a series events had gone differently in the final two minutes of regulation at Nevada.
“They take you out of things,” Utah State head coach Jerrod Calhoun said of the Lopes after the Aggies lost 84-74 at GCU. “They’ve got a massive team.”
Drew begins with ‘D’
Six seasons into the Bryce Drew program at GCU, the foundation for building a program to new heights has been clearly composed of defense.
With a team returning two rotation players, that base needed to be fortified as the season began. The Lopes were not ready to resemble the first five GCU teams under Drew that reached four NCAA Tournaments and held opponents to 40.2% shooting, the fifth-lowest clip in the nation over that five-year span.
Starting with GCU’s late-November play against Utah and Iowa and the Acrisure Classic in Palm Desert, California, the defensive brand re-emerged. Since then, the Lopes are 11-5 and allowing 39.8% opponent shooting, which ranks 20th nationally for that timeframe.
With defensive traction in what they do, the Lopes only have improved the effort as conference play got underway. During this 6-2 stretch, GCU is allowing 37.9% shooting – the ninth-lowest clip in the nation since Jan. 7.
For the season, the Lopes rank 19th nationally for defensive efficiency, according to KenPom.com.
“Our team defensively has taken such large steps,” GCU graduate power forward Nana Owusu-Anane said.
Hitting new levels
Getting better as a team has been the accumulation of individual improvements and adjustments.
Drew and his coaching staff have brought out the best in many of the Lopes players, with the conference’s only two-time MW Player of the Week being a prime example. Senior guard Jaden Henley bears the highest usage rate in the conference and is posting career highs for points per game (17.3), rebounds per game (5.5), assists per game (2.6), minutes per game (31.1) and field goal percentage (45.9%).
Despite being the nation’s 11th-most experienced team, other players are still finding ways to hit new bests:
After missing the past season for a shoulder injury, Owusu-Anane is posting the best 3-point percentage (36%) and free throw percentage (70%) of his career.
GCU junior guard Makaih Williams is averaging a career-high 12.9 points per game with a career-best free throw percentage of 79.5%.
Dusty Stromer, another junior guard, also has a career-best scoring average (6.2) and free throw percentage (89.3%) while grabbing a career-high 0.7 steals per game in 23.3 minutes per game.
“We’re all meshing at such a high level. It’s going to be a really fun second half of the season,” Stromer said.
What’s left?
Because GCU was given its conference bye date on Dec. 30, the Lopes have no schedule breaks on the 2026 slate leading up to the March 11-14 Mountain West Championship at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center.
Of GCU’s 10 remaining conference games, seven come against teams that are currently below the Lopes in the conference standings. The Lopes have full two-game series remaining with last-place Air Force and UNLV, a sixth-place team whose 5-5 record gives it the best chance of catching up to GCU.
The Lopes are looking ahead though with victories against two of the three teams remaining, although the rematches with San Diego State and Utah State will both be on the road.
As much as GCU is chasing a regular-season title, a top-four conference spot is valuable because those teams will receive a first-round bye in the MW Championship. To win the conference tournament title, a team playing in the first round would have to win four games in four days. Although GCU has made a great climb to be No. 68 in NET rankings, the Lopes’ most likely path to a fifth NCAA Tournament visit in six years would come with earning an automatic berth via the MW Championship title.
“Anytime we play, GCU’s brand of basketball is being the tougher team, so we have to embrace that and really go and show it,” Owusu-Anane said.
Lope tracks
Tuesday’s 7 p.m. game at Global Credit Union marks the first GCU-Air Force meeting.
GCU provost Dr. Randy Gibb served in the U.S. Air Force for 26 years, retiring as a colonel before joining GCU in 2014.
Lopes junior guard Caleb Shaw (ankle) will not play Tuesday, according to Drew.
GCU is in the national top 50 for opponent field goal percentage (40.8%, 44th) and points allowed per game (68.2, 49th).
Lopes junior guard Jaden Henley ranks fourth in the Mountain West for scoring at 17.3 points per game.
GCU graduate power forward Nana Owusu-Anane ranks third in the conference for rebounds per game (8.6) and blocks per game (1.05).
The Lopes are 13-0 in games they led at halftime.
GCU is 10-1 when it makes at least 30% of its 3-point attempts. The Lopes are shooting 46.4% on 3s in the past three games.
Air Force is tied for the nation’s second-longest losing streak with 14 consecutive losses. Mississippi Valley State is on a 20-game losing streak while UT San Antonio is also at 14.
The Falcons rank last in the nation for points per game (61.3).
Air Force also ranks in the national bottom 10 for scoring margin (minus-15.9 per game), turnover margin (minus-3.9 per game), rebounds (29.6 per game), free throw percentage (64.3%) and fastbreak points (6.0 per game).
The Falcons have three players averaging between 11 and 12 points (freshmen Lucas Hobin and Kam Sanders and junior Caleb Walker).
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