Men's Basketball Hosts Grand Canyon on Saturday Afternoon

GAME 12
Date: Dec. 23, 2017
Time: 1:02 p.m.
Site: KFC Yum! Center/Crum Court, Louisville, Ky. (22,000) (123-16 in 8th year)
Television: ACC Network Extra (available to authenticated subscribers of ESPN on the Watch ESPN app) Kent Taylor, play-by-play; Jody Demling, analyst.
Radio: WKRD (790 AM) Paul Rogers, play-by-play; Bob Valvano, analyst (Sirius channel 132, XM 194, Internet 956)
Series History: UofL leads 2-0 (1-0 in Louisville, 1-0 in Phoenix)
Last Meeting: UofL 79, Grand Canyon 70 (Dec. 3, 2016 at Phoenix, Ariz.)
UofL National Ranking: unranked (receiving votes in the USA Today & AP polls)
Officials: Bert Smith, Brent Hampton, Lamar Simpson
Next UofL Game: Dec. 29 at Kentucky, Lexington, Ky., 1 p.m. ET (CBS)

Louisville will play its final home nonconference game of the season as the Cardinals face Grand Canyon on Saturday in the KFC Yum! Center. Louisville won its fifth straight in beating Albany 70-68 on Wednesday as Quentin Snider totaled 19 points, four assists, and made 5-of-7 field goals, including 3-of-4 three-pointers. Louisville claimed the championship of the Houzz Gotham Classic presented by TicketIQ by winning all four games in the round-robin format, marking the 29th regular season tournament title for the Cardinals.

Deng Adel leads the Cardinals in scoring with 15.7 points per game. Quentin Snider ranks second on the team, averaging 12.3 points per game while dishing out a team best 42 assists. Spalding leads the team on the boards with 9.0 rebounds per game and ranks third on the team in scoring with 9.8 points per game. Freshman Jordan Nwora leads the team from behind the arc, shooting 45.5 percent on the year.

Grand Canyon (9-3) has won four of its last five, including a 86-56 home victory over Longwood in its last outing. Fiifi Aidoo led the Lopes with 14 points.

Coached by former NBA All-Star Dan Majerle in his fifth year at Grand Canyon, the Antelopes are picked to win the Western Athletic Conference, a league that GCU has finished second in the last three years. Senior guard Joshua Braun, the preseason WAC Player of the Year and a 2017 CoSIDA Academic All-American, is the Lopes' scoring leader (14.8 ppg) and has made 26 three-pointers.

Louisville has won the only two previous meetings, including a 79-70 victory in Phoenix last season (12-3-16) as Deng Adel led the Cardinals with 15 points, 11 of which he scored in the second half. The Lopes' DeWayne Russell poured in 42 points vs. Louisville, the most the Cards have allowed an individual to score since Joel Curbelo of American University in Puerto Rico scored 47 vs. UofL on Nov. 24, 1995. Louisville won the first meeting 111-63 at the KFC Yum! Center (12-5-15) as Damion Lee scored 24 points to lead the Cardinals. Saturday's game is the third and final of a three-game series.

CARDINAL NOTES

Louisville leads the nation in blocked shots (8.6 bpg) and ranks 13th in field goal percentage defense (.374) and 15th in FT% (.766).
Quentin Snider has averaged a team-high 16.8 points, made 12-of-20 three-pointers and handed out 18 assists over the last five games. He scored his 900th career point with 19 points and five assists vs. Memphis and was named the Gotham Classic Most Outstanding Player.
Louisville has won 62 of its last 64 nonconference games at home in the KFC Yum! Center. The Cardinals have won 26 of their last 27 home games against non-conference opponents.
Tri-captain Anas Mahmoud matched a career-high with nine blocked shots vs. Albany, adding nine points and seven rebounds. He moved up to ninth in career blocked shots at UofL (163) and is leads the nation in blocks (4.5). He blocked a career-high nine shots vs. Siena with 17 points and 13 rebounds.
UofL has shot a combined 47.8 percent from the field over the last five games (177-of-370), including 39.7 percent from the three-point line.
Louisville has a 36-6 record during the month of December over the last six years.
Louisville is one of just four schools which have won 20 or more games in each of the last 15 seasons (also Kansas, Duke and Gonzaga).
Louisville achieved a collective 3.083 grade-point average for the 2017 fall semester, with nine of 14 current student-athletes earning a 3.0 or better GPA. UofL is one of only two schools in the nation to have perfect men's basketball multi-year Academic Progress Rate (APR) scores each of the past four years. A league-high six Cardinals were named to the 2017 All-ACC Academic Team

Men's Basketball Hosts Grand Canyon on Saturday Afternoon

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Players Mentioned

Deng Adel

Anas Mahmoud

Jordan Nwora

Quentin Snider

University of Louisville Athletics