WBB Preview: Utah State Travels To Arizona For Bout With Grand Canyon
Utah State is headed to Arizona to face one of the teams set to help replace it in the Mountain West come 2026 – the Antelopes of Grand Canyon University. Grand Canyon is loaded with familiar names: Bridget Mullings, the former Aggie; Nneka Obiazor and Alyssa Durazo-Frescas, a pair of players from last year's UNLV squad; and even Anna Ostlie who is two years removed from Boise State. Mullings is only playing a few minutes a night, but the other players from Utah State’s recent past spend plenty of time on the court.
While the Aggies are finally away from playing the nation’s premier teams from power conferences, entering this game after a blowout loss to Utah, the Lopes are still a big-time threat from the WAC. Outside of the ranks of the power conferences, GCU could be one of Utah State's tougher foes this year. While Utah State is deep in a rebuild, GCU is in win-now mode with conference title aspirations, fresh off three 20-win seasons in a row under head coach Molly Miller. Grand Canyon is a veteran team headlined by Trinity San Antonio and the former UNLV sharpshooter Durazo-Frescas, and ahead of this season, it was picked as the favorite in the conference.
The Grand Canyon offense is especially menacing. San Antonio is a smart, tough, dynamic leader and with Durazo-Frescas, the Lopes have naturally become one of the better three-point shooting teams in the country. The defense isn’t much friendlier and can force a lot of mistakes.
The Lopes are 6-2 and on a four-game winning streak. Their only losses are to Middle Tennessee and Oregon – the No. 23 team in the country at the time. They’ve notched two Big 12 wins, one over Arizona State and one over Arizona, the latter coming in their most recent game.
Players To Know
Trinity San Antonio: San Antonio is an Olympian, coming off a trip to Paris with the Puerto Rico Women's National Team. Being an Olympian pretty much sums up her ability on the basketball court. She's a senior who is in her second year at GCU after a two-year stint at Cal Baptist.
She more than held her own in the Summer Games, playing in all three of Puerto Rico’s games and earning two starts. She averaged 7.3 points, 3.7 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 3.0 steals per game, but not all of her accolades are from overseas, and she has already collected some hardware right here in the WAC. She was named to the 2022-23 All-WAC First Team and the 2023-24 All-WAC Defensive Team, and was tabbed as the WAC Preseason Player of the Year ahead of this season.
She's a menacing player on both ends of the floor. On defense, she makes teams pay for even the smallest mistakes, cutting off passing lanes and picking the pockets of ball-handlers who get too comfortable. With San Antonio anywhere in the vicinity, the ball is always in danger. On offense, she rarely gives the ball away but finds a way to distribute it to anyone wearing her same colors. When she’s not dishing it to her teammates, she’s filling up the basket. She can slash through the paint and boasts an impressive range, making her a real threat from anywhere on the court. On top of all of that, she’s a proficient rebounder who has notched three double-doubles with GCU, including one in her most recent game.
She is averaging 15.6 points, 5.4 rebounds, 5.9 assists, and 3.1 steals per game this season. Those numbers are good enough to lead the team in all four categories, and enough to lead the entire conference in steals. She’s coming off a monster performance against Arizona, posting a game-high of 26 points with 12 rebounds, four assists and four steals, willing her team to victory over their power-conference neighbor.
Alyssa Durazo-Frescas: Utah State got more acquainted with Durazo-Frescas than any team would like to. She missed most of their first meeting with an injury, but when the teams met later a season ago, Durazo-Frescas did exactly what she does. She put up five shots, all from behind the arc, and got home on three of them. She recorded nine points, seven rebounds, two assists and two steals. Interestingly enough, the scoring leader in that game was Obiazor (with 16), who also left Las Vegas for Phoenix.
It was a relief for the Aggies (and the rest of the Mountain West) when she hit the portal, but Utah State wasn’t fortunate enough to get away from her entirely. If Utah State needs a refresher course on Durazo-Frescas, it won’t take long. She is a three-point shooter, and that's all the Aggies really need to know. Understanding that won't do much in the way of slowing her down, as her accuracy from range isn’t exactly a well-kept secret, but nobody has figured out a game plan to stop her. She has only failed to record a three-pointer once this season when she missed her two tries against UCSB. In each of her other games, she has hit at least two.
She’s shooting 42 percent from distance in her career, and this year that number is up to 46.3 percent. She’s knocking down an average of 3.1 deep balls per game and accounts for 25 of the team's 64 made three-pointers this year. At GCU, her role is significantly larger than it was at UNLV, and that has reflected in a significant jump in her scoring. Durazo-Frescas is averaging 12.5 points and 2.6 rebounds this year.
Tiarra Brown: Brown is a graduate in her fifth year with GCU and she’s had a highly decorated career, earning spots on the 2020-21 All-WAC Newcomer Team, 2020-21 All-WAC Second Team, 2022-23 All-WAC Defensive Team, 2022-23 All-WAC First Team, 2023-24 All-WAC Defensive Team and the 2023-24 All-WAC First Team, to name a few. During her time at GCU, the Lopes twice made a run to the WAC Championship game, but fell to Cal Baptist in both efforts. The Lopes and Lancers were picked as the top two favorites this year, and while the postseason is a long way away, this longtime Lope has been playing as if she intends to make another run for it.
Last year, she was the second-leading scorer behind San Antonio. With the addition of Durazo-Frescas and the emergence of Laura Erikstrup, who has nearly doubled her scoring output from 6.1 to 12.1 this year, Brown has dropped to the fourth-leading scorer. Here’s the catch: She’s doing it with a slight uptick in scoring. Last year, she averaged 10.3 points per game and this year, even with three other scorers above her, she’s averaging 10.9 PPG. She’s taking just about the same number of field goals (8.3 to 8.9) but the main difference is that she’s attempting more threes. Last year, she took an average of 0.6 threes a game and this year she’s taking 1.5, with an identical 25 percent hit rate. Her assists and steals made a slight jump this year too, as she went from averaging 1.4 to 2.3 assists and from 1.5 to 2.6 steals.
Stats To Know
Three-Point Shooting %: Like any team with Durazo-Frescas, the Lopes are an outstanding three-point shooting team, though she is not the only one contributing to the attack. San Antonio, Obiazor and the Erikstrup twins all help Durazo-Frescas in the perimeter offense. Still, she is far and away the main weapon from behind the arc with 25 three-pointers under her belt this year, while the next Lope behind her, San Antonio, has eight.
Even though the attack is centralized around one player, defenses can't afford to forget about the others. As a team, the Lopes are shooting 35 percent from deep. San Antonio is shooting 38.1 percent, Obiazor is at 31.6 percent, and the Erikstrup twins, Sydney and Laura, are shooting 28.6 percent and 29.4 percent respectively. Of those players, San Antonio and Laura Erikstrup are both averaging double figures, and Obiazor is averaging eight points per game. The team has plenty of scorers to help bolster the efforts of two of the best scorers in the WAC.
Their three-point shooting efforts have led to a lot of points with a lot of production from range. On average the Lopes score 32.5 percent of their 73.9 points per game from behind the arc, contributing to an average margin of victory of 13.5 points.
The Lopes do a lot to open up so much production from deep, but the main thing they do is score efficiently from the inside to open up the outside. The Lopes are shooting 44.8 percent from the field and 50.8 percent from two.
Assist To Turnover Ratio: Like previous opponents, the Utes and the Buckeyes, the Lopes are another very careful team – an archetype that Utah State has struggled against this season. They move the ball well, stacking up assists and limiting turnovers, while doing the opposite on the other end where they love to add traffic to passing lanes and force turnovers.
On both ends, it all starts with San Antonio. Her distribution skills on offense and her pickpocketing skills on defense open up the game for the Lopes. Behind San Antonio’s 5.9 assists per outing, Callie Cooper is dishing out 3.1 APG, Brown is good for 2.3 APG, and Ale’jah Douglas is kicking in 1.8 APG. This leads to 16.3 assists per game, with 60.2 percent of their field goals coming on assisted shots. Their 15.3 turnovers per game give the Lopes a nice assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.07.
On the other end, they force 19.3 turnovers per game, swiping an average of 10.8 steals. Again, this effort is led by San Antonio, who snatches 3.1 steals per game, but she has help. Brown grabs 2.6, Cooper adds 1.5, Laura Erikstrup is good for 1.3, and Douglas pitches in 1.0.