Coach Molly Miller, right, the 2024-25 WAC Coach of the Year, has turned the GCU’s women’s basketball program into a national powerhouse in her fifth season. (Photo by Christopher Hook/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
PHOENIX – After the Grand Canyon University women’s basketball team lost Nov. 18 to Oregon, coach Molly Miller reflected on the 2-2 team’s trajectory. While she felt her players competed and displayed potential, they needed time to integrate transfers and had a tough non-conference schedule ahead.
Four months and 28 games later, GCU has lost zero games since. Miller and the Lopes fought through early adversity and fulfilled their potential, all without losing a game.
On Wednesday, top-seeded GCU extended its winning streak to 28 after an easy 71-47 victory over Utah Tech in Las Vegas. The Lopes’ Trinity San Antonio led all scorers with 25 points.
At 30-2, GCU’s 2024-25 season has been nothing short of historic. The Lopes finished undefeated in conference play and at home, won three conference awards and swept in-state rivals Arizona State, Arizona and Northern Arizona. Miller won the WAC Coach of the Year award, while San Antonio was unanimously named WAC Player of the Year and guard Tiarra Brown won WAC Defensive Player of the Year.
All eyes will be on GCU as the heavy favorites in the WAC Tournament. Miller said the high stakes of the postseason are her comfort zone.
“If there’s pressure, it’s been on us all year long,” Miller said. “There’s a streak, there’s a conference regular season championship on the line, there’s an undefeated home streak on the line. This team doesn’t get rattled by that stuff.”
Before becoming coach in April 2020, Miller established herself as a premier basketball coach. In six seasons coaching at Drury University – a Division II school in Springfield, Missouri, and her alma mater – Miller won 91% of her games and won WBCA Division II National Coach of the Year twice in 2019 and 2020. In those two seasons, Drury went 67-1, reached the Women’s Final Four in the 2019 NCAA Division II Tournament, and earned the tournament’s top seed in 2020 at 32-0 before the season ended due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Miller looks to lead GCU to the NCAA Women’s Tournament for the first time in her five-year tenure and the program’s first time since 2013. GCU fell short twice in recent years, losing in the WAC Tournament finals in 2021 and 2022.
“This is my comfort zone, where we’re at right now,” Miller said. “When I came to GCU, we were 32-0 at Druri, and this is, like, my default right here.”
Of the 27 consecutive wins, GCU won 24 games by double-digits, including 12 straight. Miller has resorted to simulating an entire practice as if the team had lost the previous game, despite her team’s dominance.
“What really happens when you lose a game? Well, you get more dialed in, you focus on the details,” Miller said. “It was a tough practice, and the standard was even higher than it had been before.”
Brown and San Antonio said that the odd experience of pretending to lose was beneficial to replicate the same intensity from early season practices.
“Usually when you lose, you come to practice more determined, it’s grittier,” Brown said. “It’s like the beginning of the season, how the practices are more intense like that. I think it helped us a lot.”
A team with such a dominant regular season might find it challenging to avoid focusing on the NCAA Tournament. Yet Miller, San Antonio, Brown and the rest of the team maintain the same attitude despite the attention and expectations that the success brings.
For Miller, that noise includes reports related to the recent opening of the ASU women’s vacancy after coach Natasha Adair was fired with a 29-62 record in three seasons. Despite rumors swirling around her name and ASU job, Miller remains committed to GCU and winning the WAC.
“Me and my team are locked in,” Miller said. “Right now, the rest is noise and we’re worried about the conference championship.”
After all the chatter, pressure and wins, GCU stands two games away from a turning point in program history. The Lopes would likely earn a lower seed if they make the NCAA Tournament, but the GCU men’s basketball team took a similar path last season as a 12th-seed upset over fifth-seeded Saint Mary’s in the first round.
The team is more than ready for the challenge.
“I’ve always wanted this since I was a freshman,” San Antonio said. “You have to have the reason why. Remembering our reasons why when we started playing basketball to now, it all leads up to that.”