Maryland men’s basketball saw their NCAA Tournament bid finalized on Sunday night, drawing a four-seed vs. Grand Canyon in Seattle. With tipoff set for 4:35 PM EST on TBS, we take a look at Maryland’s first opponent: the WAC champion Grand Canyon Lopes.
Head coach: Bryce Drew (284-147 all-time, 120-39 at Grand Canyon)
2024-25 record: 26-7 (13-3)
NET: 92nd
KenPom: 93rd
Scoring offense: 54th (79.2)
Scoring defense: 90th (69.1)
Led by fifth-year head coach Bryce Drew, who sits fifth in all-time wins in program history, Grand Canyon punched a ticket to their third consecutive NCAA Tournament and fourth time in the last five years after taking down top-seed Utah Valley, 89-82, in the WAC championship game on Saturday. After returning five key contributors from last season’s 30-win team, Grand Canyon will look to pull off an NCAA Tournament upset for the second consecutive year.
After wrapping up their third consecutive season with at least 24 wins, Grand Canyon secured a Quad One win back on Dec. 14 in a five-point win vs. Georgia, while the Lopes secured Quad Two wins against Stanford and Saint Louis.
The Lopes are led by a pair of WAC First Team selections, four double-figure scorers and six players who transferred into the program after stints at a high major program.
JaKobe Coles, a 6-foot-8 senior transfer with stints at Butler and TCU, leads the team in scoring with 14.8 points again, just ahead of Tyon Grant-Foster, a 6-foot-7 senior averaging 14.5 points per game after transferring in following stints at DePaul and Kansas. Foster was sidelined for nearly a month before rejoining the team ahead of the WAC Tournament, battling a lower-body injury. Ray Harrison sits third in scoring (11.6) with Duke Brennan, a second-team All-WAC and all-defensive team selection, averaging a near double-double with 10.7 points and 9.2 rebounds per game. But for a Maryland frontcourt that was just embarrassed in the Big Ten semifinal loss vs. Michigan, senior Julian Reese will have a chance at redemption with a chance to control the paint.
What the Lopes do well is play with tempo, sitting 14th in adjusted tempo (KenPom) to Maryland at 56th. Grand Canyon’s length will be something to watch with all five of Grand Canyon’s starters at least 6-foot-4 with Brennan manning the paint. Lök Wur, an Oregon transfer turned WAC’s Sixth Man of the Year, is averaging just over eight points per game on 45% shooting while all-defensive team selection Collin Moore averages nearly 26 minutes per game off the bench, though he started for the Lopes during the WAC Tournament run.
Grand Canyon is 17-1 this season when shooting at least 45% from the floor, along with 97-13 under Bryce Drew when scoring 70 points or more. While they also rank inside the top-ten nationally in defensive rating since Dec. 17, what could tilt the scale in Maryland’s favor? Efficiency, with Grand Canyon averaging over 13 turnovers per game. The Terps, meanwhile, finished with just nine turnovers across two games in the Big Ten Tournament and sit third in the Big Ten with just 10.3 per game.
Maryland opened as a double-digit favorite on the sportsbooks, while both KenPom (82-68) and Bart Torvik (82-70) project a win for Maryland in Seattle.
The winner will face either fifth-seed Memphis or 12th-seed Colorado State, though it’s Colorado State who opened as the favorite. That could be attributed to the injury to Memphis star guard Tyrese Hunter, who was inactive for Sunday’s AAC championship game vs. UAB after suffering the injury in the semifinal win vs. Tulane.
“We don’t know what’s going on with Tyrese, so hopefully it’s not for the worst,” Memphis head coach Penny Hardaway said after Saturday’s win.
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