LAS VEGAS – Bryce Drew went looking for a point guard because he wanted Makaih Williams to score more easily. Grand Canyon already had a guard who averaged 14 points, a wing who could carry an offense and a center who rarely missed around the basket. Asking those players to do more of what they did last season wasn’t the whole answer. Drew wanted somebody to get them the ball.
Dylan Darling has done that job on a Sweet 16 team. He has also been the player everyone else needed to get the ball to, winning Big Sky Player of the Year at Idaho State before spending last season at St. John’s. Grand Canyon’s most consequential addition has been both a leading scorer and the point guard surrounded by other accomplished scorers.
“Finding an experienced guard like Dylan was our top priority because we feel he can make Makaih even better,” Drew told Grand Canyon Athletics at Mountain West media day.
That explains the ambition behind a roster that drew 10 first-place votes in the conference’s preseason poll, one more than New Mexico, while finishing a point behind the Lobos overall. Drew isn’t trying to rescue a bad team. The Lopes won 20 games and tied for third in their first Mountain West season. He is trying to get more from the players who made that possible while giving himself enough alternatives to withstand the injuries that shortened last winter’s rotation.
Williams led the Lopes with 56 threes last season, but his value extends beyond waiting for a pass outside. Drew regards him as a scorer at all three levels. Making Williams responsible for organizing the offense as well as finishing possessions puts those responsibilities in competition. Darling gives Drew a way to let Williams concentrate on the defender in front of him instead of first arranging everybody else.
Jaden Henley has even more to gain from the help. He started all 32 games last season, reached double figures in 31 and led Grand Canyon in scoring, assists and steals. His 17.7 points per game understated the range of his work. He also averaged 5.7 rebounds and took 205 free throws, repeatedly getting into the contact that made the offense productive when outside shots didn’t fall.
UNLV got a particularly unpleasant look at that combination. Henley had 17 points and 10 rebounds in the road meeting, then 28 and 11 in the February game in Phoenix. He made all three of his threes in the latter. He has already beaten conference opponents with scoring and rebounding; the new guards let him share more of the passing.
Henley worked out for 15 NBA teams and earned a Summer League spot with Detroit before rejoining Grand Canyon in August. The feedback gave him particular work to do on his three-point shooting and defense. His return also offers something his college career hadn’t supplied: a second year with the same coach. Coaching changes had moved him from Minnesota to DePaul to UNLV to Grand Canyon, where his scoring average rose by more than five points. In an October interview with the school’s athletics staff, he described the pressure of needing the ball to make so much happen last season. The new guards will let him spend more time on the wing.
He didn’t arrive back in Phoenix satisfied with 20 wins. The Mountain West quarterfinal loss to Reno stayed with him through the draft process. “It sits on me and weighs on my mind,” Henley said. “I’m going to be able to see them again.” For a player returning after NBA evaluations, the unfinished college work has an identifiable opponent. Grand Canyon’s season ended in the second half of that tournament game; Henley now gets another year to pursue the NCAA Tournament with the coach who helped him have his best season.
Darling’s own route makes him more interesting than a simple assist total. At Idaho State, he averaged 19.8 points and 5.7 assists in 2024-25. At St. John’s, he had to fit into a team with other accomplished players. His most visible contribution arrived against Kansas in March, when his driving layup at the buzzer sent the Red Storm to the Sweet 16. It was his first field goal of the game. A season of adjustment still left him ready to take the last shot.
Drew can pair him with Tre Holloman, who has already played through four NCAA Tournament seasons at Michigan State and North Carolina State. Holloman made 51 of 127 threes for the Wolfpack last season, a 40.2% rate that supplies something different from Darling’s playmaking. He has enough passing experience to run possessions, too. Both can contribute while the other handles the ball.
The first public exhibition required Holloman to take on more of that work. Darling, Caleb Shaw and Jaden Zimmerman sat out against Western New Mexico, and the Lopes spent the opening nine minutes turning the ball over almost as often as they attempted a shot. Seven turnovers and a 3-for-11 start helped the Division II Mustangs take an 18-8 lead. Grand Canyon didn’t move ahead until fewer than five minutes remained in the half.
Williams changed the game with eight points in about 90 seconds. Holloman stayed on the floor for 29 minutes and finished with six assists and three steals. After the initial rush of mistakes, Grand Canyon committed five turnovers over the final 31 minutes and won 82-59. The improvement was substantial enough that the opening didn’t determine the result. It wasn’t so complete that Drew could dismiss how poorly his team began.
The distribution of the work mattered. Henley scored seven points and grabbed 11 rebounds. Grand Canyon collected 21 assists on 30 field goals, scored 52 points in the paint and got 33 points from its bench. Western New Mexico’s early lead gave way to a game in which the Lopes could use their size and keep producing without a large scoring night from their best player. There were several ways back into the game once they stopped giving possessions away.
They found almost none of them from the three-point line. Holloman and Blake Barkley combined to miss all nine of their attempts, and the team finished 4 for 21. Barkley had shot 38.3% from deep while leading East Tennessee State in scoring and rebounding last season. One poor night doesn’t erase that record or Holloman’s. Their shooting still carries particular importance on a team whose returning leading scorer made 26.8% of his threes a year ago.
Barkley also gives the offense a different shape. At 6-foot-8, he can supply a credible outside threat from a forward position rather than requiring Drew to add another guard to spread the floor. His breakout at East Tennessee State included a Southern Conference regular-season title and 14.6 points per game. The attraction is the combination: a player large enough to work in the frontcourt who has already produced from beyond the arc. That makes him especially useful alongside a center whose work happens near the basket.
The new forwards also have a significant departure to cover. Nana Owusu-Anane averaged 8.5 rebounds last season, leading the team while starting every game. Henley did plenty on the glass, but Owusu-Anane supplied a larger share of that work than any returner. Barkley brings a record of rebounding at East Tennessee State, and Amarion Dickerson can contribute from the wing. Grand Canyon’s size will look different depending on which of them Drew uses. Replacing the leading rebounder becomes part of choosing the best offensive group, particularly when Holloman and Darling share the backcourt and Henley moves into the frontcourt.
Efe Demirel earned his place in the preseason all-conference group by converting that work into an unusually efficient freshman season. The 7-foot-1 center started 28 games and made 63% of his field-goal attempts. He scored 22 on 10-for-11 shooting against Oklahoma State and later went 6 for 6 in a win over Boise State. The Lopes have a returning interior scorer who has already punished good opponents, rather than a tall prospect whose contribution exists mostly in projection.
Tyler Behrend’s arrival from Tulsa gives Drew another substantial player to use there. Against Western New Mexico, the two centers helped Grand Canyon dominate inside but both fouled out. Both options became unavailable, leaving Drew to finish without either center.
“They’ve got to defend better without fouling,” Drew said afterward. “Be physical without fouling.”
The distinction becomes harder when an opposing guard gets past the first defender. A center has to protect the basket while staying available for the next possession, and a whistle can remove both a defensive presence and an efficient finisher. Grand Canyon has strengthened its perimeter personnel, but the centers’ foul trouble showed how quickly those jobs become connected. Drew can rotate size. He cannot rotate his way out of every unnecessary foul.
Amarion Dickerson can help without occupying the same role. The former Horizon League Defensive Player of the Year blocked four shots and collected seven rebounds in 24 minutes against Western New Mexico. A fractured hip had ended his season at USC; his first public appearance as a Lope supplied an immediate reminder of what his length can do. He scored only six points, yet Grand Canyon outscored the Mustangs by 29 with him on the floor.
At 6-foot-7, Dickerson offers Drew a defender who can play on the wing and spend time at power forward. That matters to the smaller combinations the guards make available. Putting another ballhandler in the lineup doesn’t automatically require giving up every source of help near the rim. Dickerson’s shot blocking gives Drew another way to protect it, and his seven rebounds helped turn those stops into Grand Canyon possessions. The Lopes finished with a 43-23 rebounding advantage and allowed just five offensive boards.
There will be competition for the remaining perimeter minutes. Zimmerman averaged 15.1 points at Quinnipiac, and Micah Tucker started Georgia State’s final 28 games. Their previous responsibilities are part of what makes the depth appealing, but they also make this an unusual group to manage. Players who handled the ball regularly at their last schools won’t all have the same freedom here. Some will enter games after long stretches on the bench and need to contribute immediately.
Drew has reason to welcome that complication. Last season, injuries left him with fewer choices than he wanted. This roster has 13 players who have started a Division I game. The difference isn’t just the number of scorers available; an absence no longer has to move every remaining guard one place beyond the role he is best suited to fill. Holloman’s work against Western New Mexico offered a useful example, even on a night when his own shot didn’t cooperate.
The early home schedule gives Grand Canyon time to establish those combinations. Texas Southern visits for the Nov. 2 opener, followed by Bethune-Cookman, Cal Poly and Louisiana Monroe. The work becomes more demanding later in November, when the Lopes face Saint Louis in the Acrisure Classic before a second game against Stanford or Colorado. A trip to Oklahoma State and a home game against Santa Clara follow in December.
Grand Canyon belongs near the top of the Mountain West. Henley and Williams have already scored against this league, Demirel has already finished against its frontcourts, and Drew has brought in players who can change how often those returners must create something alone. Drew hoped to have Darling available for the opener, and Holloman has already handled the offense in his absence. Williams, the scorer whose role drove the search for a point guard, led the Lopes in their final exhibition.
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