PHOENIX – As the Grand Canyon women’s basketball season progressed toward an unwanted finish, freshman guard Diamond Wright never saw her teammates waver.
“We had a lot of jokes in the locker room, and that’s where we built most of our chemistry,” Wright said. “It created relationships that I feel like will last forever.”
For Lopes first-year coach Winston Gandy, that sentiment meant more than GCU’s record this season. It meant he was on the right path.
“I’ve learned how important patience is…and how hard it is to win,” Gandy said. “I think I’ve learned how important maturity is. That was definitely something that … I didn’t realize just how important it is or maybe I took that for granted.”
Before arriving at Grand Canyon, Gandy was a part of three elite programs. He was an assistant coach for two seasons at South Carolina under Dawn Staley, including the 2023-24 season in which the Gamecocks posted a 38-0 record and won the national championship.
Before that, he spent three seasons as an assistant on Kara Lawson’s Duke staff – the final one as associate head coach – and three at Rice where the Owls won two Conference USA regular season titles and the 2019 conference tournament title.
But his first foray as a head coach came with multiple challenges. The biggest was following Molly Miller, who departed GCU for Arizona State after leading the Lopes to a 32-3 record and their first-ever NCAA Division I Tournament appearance in the 2024-25 season.
That success created a high standard, but Gandy didn’t view it as pressure. He knew that a new coaching staff, new players and a more competitive conference would mean shifting the focus from immediate results to long-term growth.
In his first season at GCU, Gandy’s Lopes went 13-19 overall and 11-9 in their first season in the Mountain West Conference before falling to Colorado State on a buzzer beater in the second round of the conference tournament. Still, Gandy focused on building something deeper: a foundation constructed on patience, trust, and development.
“I did not think we would be an at-large team (in the NCAA Tournament),” Gandy said. “I knew we were going to have to win our conference and to kind of prepare for that.
“I believe in testing ourselves against other potential tournament teams, Final Four teams, and teams that were expected to win their conference so we would get a sense as to what that feels like before we went into our conference.”
Those matchups included games against NCAA Tournament teams South Carolina, Oregon and Gonzaga, as well as UC Santa Barbara, which won 20 games. GCU lost all of those games, including a lopsided 94-54 loss to Gandy’s former team, the Gamecocks. Despite those setbacks, Gandy felt the games helped prepare the Lopes for conference play where they posted a winning record to finish sixth in the league.
For freshman guard Ines Zounia, that growth came with a lot of adjustments. Zounia is an international player from Lille, France. Being a part of Gandy’s first recruiting class, Zounia had to adapt to a new team and playing style along with starting her new life in the United States.
“It was a big transition, I didn’t think it was going to be like this,” Zounia said. “Everything was different: school, basketball, and life… The difference was the work ethic. We put a lot of work in the summer, and film… There was more intensity which surprised me, and I wasn’t really ready but I plan to work on this.”
Zounia wasn’t fully prepared for how different basketball in the U.S. would be. She had to adjust to playing a more physical and intense style of game while also adjusting academically. The education, along with the intensity in basketball, was different from France.
Off the court culture was even more shocking for her. When she first arrived in the United States, her teammates welcomed her in a way to which she wasn’t accustomed.
“The first time I went here, everyone and the whole team came to hug me and I was really surprised because in France we don’t usually hug people if we don’t know them,” she said.
What started off as an unusual feeling quickly turned into a state of comfort. Adjusting to the team and being around them every day helped Zounia adjust to her new environment while being away from her family.
“They’re like my second family. I live with them… I’m always with them… I travel with them,” Zounia said. “I’m grateful for having a good team and good coaches.”
That sense of belonging didn’t occur overnight; it took time. That’s the same approach Gandy is taking with his team as he tries to rebuild the program after Miller’s departure: it’s going to take time.
“At the beginning he was hard on me,” said Zounia. “But he proved that I could trust him.”
Wright experienced a similar progression with Gandy when it came to building trust.
“I feel like in the beginning, we obviously didn’t know each other at the time, so just learning how each other work I feel like I had to get to know his personality,” she said, “what he liked and didn’t like and I feel like that really expanded our bond and trust.”
That trust was all the more important when GCU sustained injuries to players such as Anisa Jeffries, Casey Valenti-Paea and Favor Ayodele, with Sophia Fontaine also taking an injury redshirt season.
“When we had girls get hurt at the time, I feel like it drastically changed our relationship for the better because he had to trust me,” Wright said.
As a coach, Gandy knew he had to trust his players, but he also wanted to build a friendship with them. Those efforts were apparent to Wright as she got to know Gandy.
“His humor stood out to me. He’s a joker, and sometimes you don’t have to take him to heart but I feel like it made practices easier,” Wright said. “He’ll always tell you what you could have done better but there is always a joke tied to the end, so it made the relationship better.”
The balance between accountability and connection is something that Gandy hopes will continue to mold the team as it moves forward. With a young roster and new foundation in place, the Lopes are still learning what kind of team they can become under Gandy’s leadership. Despite the lack of wins last season, the trust and chemistry that is being built behind the scenes are creating a tone for the future.
“I think the foundation was laid … even if we didn’t get the desired results, we saw a lot of growth from a lot of different people,” Gandy said. “I think you’ll see a more cohesive unit … a team that’s playing for more than themselves.”
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