Arizona-Grand Canyon pregame: Is there more to come?

If Dan Majerle had his way, tonight’s Grand Canyon-Arizona game would be not only the first of many games in a renewed series but also part of an in-state round-robin, where GCU, NAU, ASU and UA all play each other.

Maybe even with some of those teams occasionally playing at GCU Arena, he says, or Phoenix’s Talking Stick Arena.

As of now, that’s not happening. ASU still won’t schedule the Antelopes, even though an informal Pac-12 boycott of GCU in 2013 has dissolved, and Majerle said he believes the sole reason for that is the ASU president.

“I think it’s just Dr. (Michael) Crow,” Majerle said. “We’re the only other Division I team (in the Phoenix area), we’re right down the road, and I think we’ve done a great job. But I don’t have any ill will toward ASU.”

While the Wildcats may offer another one-time game contract to GCU, as they did for tonight’s game, they might have little to gain by scheduling a game at GCU or a home-and-away series at this point.

When asked last week about the possibility of playing at GCU, as Louisville did, UA coach Sean Miller said this:

“We play them his year for the first time. We respect them. Dan Majerle was a tremendous player and he’s doing a great job with their program. We’re gonna play them and when we get through this year maybe we’ll revisit that.”

UA is paying GCU $75,000 for making a one-time appearance for tonight’s game. That’s about $15,000 less than a typical UA payment for a Division I opponent, but GCU obviously has fewer travel expenses to cover.

Majerle has also scheduled the Antelopes at Duke and Penn State this season, but said collecting the guarantees from road games has “nothing to do with" his budget, that the program is seeking to build itself in part via the competition and exposure from big-time games.

Our main advance story today looked into GCU’s unique for-profit structure and how basketball fits into it. The school’s publicly traded stock has well outpaced the stock market indexes since Majerle was hired in 2013.

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