PHOENIX — Molly Miller’s Grand Canyon women’s basketball team enters the big dance on top of the world. The ‘Lopes boast the longest active win streak heading into March Madness at 30 games.
Miller’s team had to win the WAC Tournament championship game against UT Arlington to make the Big Dance.
It took a fourth-quarter comeback, as GCU trailed 48-44 and had to overcome as many as 10-point deficit in the game.
Guard Callie Cooper secured the game’s biggest steal with four seconds left, sealing a 65-62 victory and a spot in the tournament.
Winning in a gritty come-from-behind fashion provides the battle-tested mentality needed for the tournament.
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“I think the pressure to win the (WAC) championship helped us because we had to win a really different way,” Miller said Tuesday. “I mean we grinded that thing out. We got stops. We won ugly, which I’ll take ugly dancing any day. But it’s a good testament to our kids of what needs to happen game by game to get over the hump, and this is gonna present a new challenge for us, but we’re excited and ready for it.”
Molly Miller brings tournament experience to GCU from Drury
This may be Miller’s first NCAA Division I tournament appearance, but she is no stranger to postseason success.
At the Division II level, coaching for her alma mater, the Drury Panthers, Miller compiled a dominant 180-17 record over six seasons, including a 105-5 record in the Great Lakes Valley Conference.
Her teams reached the Sweet 16 three times, advanced to the Final Four once, and were primed as the No. 1 overall seed for the 2020 NCAA Tournament before COVID-19 canceled the event. That year, the Panthers went 32-0.
“At Drury, I always said in the postseason: one — your defense has to travel,” Miller said. “You have to value the basketball and rely on the foundation you’ve built. Don’t do anything different. Don’t think this is a schematics game.
“This is a mentality game. So I think in practice, that’s what we’re really focused on, is the mentality of winning and giving our best shot and going in there with the mindset that we’re going to knock off the Baylor Bears.”
GCU’s mentality heading into matchup versus Baylor
Similar to the men’s team this year, GCU enters the tournament as a No. 13 seed, set to take on No. 4 seed Baylor. Baylor is a 16.5-point favorite, according to FanDuel Sportsbook.
Just a year after the men’s team made school history with its first NCAA Tournament win, the women look to replicate that success.
Grand Canyon’s men’s coach Bryce Drew gave some words of advice to Miller and her team.
“He popped his head in the other day,” Miller said. “He’s always been so supportive, and all the programs have been so supportive of each other. And I just think the be yourself mentality … We’re really going to enjoy ourselves. And yeah, he just said, ‘be yourself.'”
Coach @MollyMiller33 of @GCU_WBB on Bryce Drew’s words of wisdom as they prepare for their first round matchup versus Baylor #LopesUp pic.twitter.com/E4UHANm5LS
— Brandon Cadiz (@HiBranFlakes) March 18, 2025
The mindset of treating the program’s first tournament game just like any other has resonated in the locker room.
Senior guard Alyssa Durazo-Frescas, the ‘Lopes’ third-leading scorer, embraces the shift from being the hunted in the WAC Conference to playing the underdog role on the national stage.
“We always kind of had a target on our back every time that we went to the conference game or the WAC Tournament,” Durazo-Frescas said. “But now we’re kind of the underdogs and we have nothing to lose. Baylor has everything to lose. So we’re going to go in there, we’re going to fight, claw, scratch — everything we can to come through.”
The ‘Lopes will have their hands full. Baylor has six players averaging double-digit points, accounting for 71 of the team’s 78 points per game (23rd in the nation).
The Bears also dominate the boards, ranking 20th nationally with 41.1 rebounds per game.
However, GCU holds an edge on defense, ranking 29th in the country by allowing just 56.7 points per game.
Offensively, the ‘Lopes average 77.2 points per game, right behind Baylor for 26th nationally.
Led by a veteran core of seniors and graduate students — Trinity San Antonio, Laura Erikstrup, Durazo-Frescas and Tiarra Brown — GCU’s ultimate goal remains the same, regardless of seeding.
San Antonio acknowledges the outside noise and doubters but embraces the challenge.
“We’re kind of projected to lose a lot in this tournament, so just to be able to prove what we can show, I think that’s the underdog mentality,” San Antonio said. “I told my teammates I’m going to fill out a bracket saying we beat Baylor.”
For Miller, this moment is the culmination of a championship mindset instilled from day one.
“Well, it starts in the summer, and we said we’re gonna win a championship in June,” Miller said. “We didn’t say we’re gonna win a championship in March. So I think that mindset from the get-go — we had talent and it was just about putting the pieces together and the buy-in was there, the leadership was there, the commitment was there.
“And that starts in preseason conditioning when they’re running that mile around the track wondering, ‘why are we doing this?’ And here we are, that’s why we did it.”
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