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OREM — In its second marquee matchup in a week, the Utah Valley men's basketball team got off to a slow start.
However, UVU turned up the defense, used a 20-1 run in the first half and beat Grand Canyon 68-56 for the first win over the ’Lopes in the Mark Pope era.
"Super ugly, weird, neither one of us, Dan (Majerle) or I would have guessed that we would have those lineups on the floor in gut-check time," UVU head coach Pope said. "It is what it is. You have some games like that. Could not be any more incredibly proud of our guys for winning the game when it was messy."
UVU improves to a program-best 16-6 overall and 5-1 in Western Athletic Conference play while GCU falls to 15-7 overall and 4-2 in conference play.
The Wolverines fell behind Grand Canyon 14-2 in the first nine minutes of Saturday's contest at the UCCU Center.
Enter Jerrelle DeBerry. The senior transfer from Kent State hit a 3-pointer from the corner with 10:06 to play in the first half to spark a 20-1 run for the Wolverines.
During the run, the Wolverines forced 11 turnovers and frustrated GCU over the final 10 minutes.
In fact, the UVU defense held WAC Preseason Player of the Year Joshua Braun to just one point on one shot attempt, and UVU took a 30-24 lead into halftime.
"I mean Braun seems to kill us every time," Conner Toolson said. "He always has big games against us. KO (Kenneth Ogbe) was starting on Braun, and he did a really good job of staying on him and making sure he didn't get any wide-open looks, ’cause once he gets his threes going, he is pretty tough to guard."
And when UVU leads at the half, it wins. The Wolverines improved to 15-1 this season when leading at the half.
Despite GCU scoring the first five points of the second half, the Wolverines never took the foot off the pedal.
Akolda Manyang battled back from first-half foul trouble to score all 14 of his points in the second half, including a highlight-reel, alley-oop dunk that put the exclamation on the win.
Toolson and Kenneth Ogbe both finished in double figures for the Wolverines with 12 and 10 points, respectively.
UVU shot 42 percent on the night, including 6 of 11 from beyond the arc. The Wolverines were also 15 of 18 from the free-throw line in the second half and finished 22 of 30 from the charity stripe.
Alissandro Lever had a game-high 22 points for GCU. Oscar Frayer was the only other GCU player in double figures with 11 points. The ’Lopes shot 37 percent on the night and were just 4 of 15 from beyond the arc.
"It makes me happy," Pope said of snapping UVU's six-game losing streak to Grand Canyon. "It makes me really happy. One of the fun things about this program is that we get to have a lot of firsts. And this was another one of them."
Next up
UVU travels to the Pacific Northwest to take on Seattle University on Feb. 3 in Key Arena. It will be the final game of the first half of conference play for the Wolverines.
GCU hosts UMKC on Feb. 1 in the GCU Arena.
Kyle McDonald is sports fan who loves the Chicago Cubs. Follow him on Twitter at @kylesportsbias
