GCU women win seventh straight; improve to 8-1

Grand Canyon won its seventh straight game and improved to 8-1 on the season with a 72-60 victory over Northwest Nazarene in the PacWest/GNAC Challenge at Dixie State College in St. George, Utah Saturday.

Samantha Murphy (Phoenix, AZ, Xavier Prep), the program’s all-time leading scorer, hit the 1,600-point plateau for her career and fellow senior guard Rosalyn Nelson (Phoenix, AZ, Deer Valley), second on the scoring list, went over the 1,300-point mark.

"We started to get out in transition and that helped us extend our lead," said GCU coach Trent May. "This was a good weekend for us. Our girls showed we can compete and win against other teams in our region."

Murphy finished with a game-high 19 and is right at 1,600 points for her career. She also had six rebounds. Nelson filled the stat sheet with 16 points (1,301 for her career), seven rebounds, six assists and three steals.

Jallisa Butler (Las Vegas, Nev., Cimarron, Barstow CC) had 10 points and seven rebounds. Stevie Kamp (Mesa, Ariz., Mountain View, Nova Southeastern) had eight points and a game-high eight rebounds.

Nelson hit a 3-pointer just before the halftime buzzer to stretch the team’s lead to seven, 36-29, and the Antelopes extended the lead in the second half to as much as 21, 54-33, with 13:06 remaining.

Joslynn Frazier (Sacramento, Calif., Burbank, College of Canyons) hit all three of her field goal attempts and finished with seven points. Senior guard Kristi Girdley (Aliso Viejo, CA, Aliso Niguel) added three assists. Senior Katie Johnson (Phoenix, AZ, Deer Valley, South Mountain CC) played a season-high 20 minutes and added five points, including 3-of-4 from the free-throw line, and four rebounds.

GCU went 2-0 in the challenge, including Friday’s 74-69 upset win over No. 5 Seattle Pacific. The ‘Lopes, fourth among others receiving votes in the USA Today/ESPN Division II Top 25 poll, will play two games in San Francisco next weekend in the CCAA/PacWest Challenge. Grand Canyon plays host San Francisco State on Friday and Cal State Stanislaus on Saturday.

"We have a long way to go and there are a lot of details, on both offense and defense, we need to get better at," added May.

GCU wraps up its 2010 portion of the schedule with home games Dec. 18 against Fresno Pacific and Dec. 31 versus Texas A&M International.

GCU WOMEN’S BASKETBALL WEB SITE: http://gculopes.com/index.aspx?path=wbball&