Have you ever been to a game in West Phoenix? If the answer is no, then you’re missing out on one of the best parties at a college basketball game.
Grand Canyon students, known as the Havocs, make GCU games a spectacle. Capacity is 7,000 at Global Credit Union Arena (GCU Arena), and boy, do the Havocs make use of the space. It’s loud and boisterous for all 40 minutes.
“You can’t hear one word in your timeout,” Rick Pitino said after he brought his Louisville Cardinals to the Valley years ago.
As a result, the Havocs were named as the best mid-major tradition with 45% of the vote in last week’s poll.
The Big 5 came in second in the poll with 31% of the vote. Silent Night at Taylor University, from the NAIA, was next at 17%. LIU’s Fins Up and Ramp Ball at The Pit each received 3%.
Time to take a little bit of a deeper dive into the Havocs. SB Nation ran a feature on the group back in 2017, when the men’s and women’s programs were just in their fourth year of Division I competition and more than four years before a run of five NCAA Tournament appearances.
To describe the Havocs, Connor Pelton wrote: “Think Augusta National meets Disneyland, but with 19,000 college students and a Chick-fil-A.”
The game Pelton attended was a matchup between the Lopes and Seattle, in which a total of seven points were scored over the first seven minutes, but the energy in the arena was still buzzing.
Of note, GCU was founded as the first for-profit Christian university in the U.S. in 2004 and was embroiled in allegations relating to its status. That status was changed to not-for-profit institution when the Department of Education was ordered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to reverse a previous denial. The resources are definitely there, given the athletics department’s backing from Arizona sports kingpin Jerry Colangelo, to field a strong team on the court, but also to bolster the fan experience and atmosphere.
And it’s certainly all connected. The Lopes have elevated from the WAC to the Mountain West, and the men’s team enters this season as the favorite in their new home as Bryce Drew’s aims for his fifth trip to the Big Dance in seven seasons.
No matter your opinion on GCU as an institution, the Havocs make the games an amazing atmosphere.
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