Destination: Palo Alto, California.
 
Again.
 
For the second consecutive year, the top-seeded Grand Canyon University Women's Rugby team was a rude host at the Pacific Desert Rugby Conference Tournament's Championship Match, dominating from start to finish en route to a 34-0 shutout of 2^nd-seeded Arizona State University Saturday night at GCU Soccer Stadium on the GCU campus. The win punched the Lopes' ticket to Palo Alto and the Collegiate Rugby Association of America Western Regional Tournament, where they will play the tournament hosts, Stanford University, for the second straight year. The Lopes will join the Cardinal, PDRC Regular Season Champion Brigham Young University and University of California-Berkeley in the four-team tournament that begins April 21. The victory also upped the Lopes' season record to 7-1 and tied the program's best-ever win total for a spring 15's season (set last year). The loss ended the Sun Devils' season with a 5-2 overall mark.
 
While the match wasn't a blowout until midway through the second half, the Lopes' defense was stalwart from the outset. The Lopes allowed the Sun Devils just two bonafide opportunities to score all night while staying on the attack in ASU's zone for 80% of the match. The Devils elected to try a penalty kick with eight minutes left in the first half, but Naomi Stietzel's kick was wide; then ASU's Baylee Little burrowed her way into traffic with just under 15 minutes left in the match but was denied when she reached the try zone to keep the GCU shutout intact.
 
"Defensively, when that ball was out, we hit them, hit them hard and we didn't let them get the ball back," said Lopes' forward Kloe Williams. "We then reduced our knock-ons offensively. We kept the ball in hand, made smart passes and didn't allow them to get a hand on the ball."
 
The Lopes' offensive prowess was steady throughout the match, scoring 17 points in each half, and while Lopes' sophomore forward Kalisi Po'oi registered a hat trick by scoring all three of GCU's 1^st-half tries, she had plenty of help.
 
"Kalisi did so well where she was at being ready to score inside the 5-meter line, but it was the entire team that got her to that line to execute," said Lopes' Head Coach Lindsey Mahoney. "It was team rugby. It was beautiful rugby. It was like the French word 'jouer', which means 'to play', which has been our focus this year. The girls were able to have fun, but still execute well in the process."
 
ASU held the Lopes scoreless for the first 18 minutes of the second half to keep the game within range, but a pair of breakaway tries - from Atley Boyd and then Angel Lucero - four minutes apart ended the suspense about the outcome. GCU's Sofia Rico ended the night with another breakaway in the final moments of the match. Despite having long angles to kick from all evening long, Samantha Garcia converted a pair of two-point conversions for the Lopes.

The Lopes now head to Palo Alto even more confident than they were at this time last year when they upset the Cardinal, 26-24, in the 2022 CRAA Semifinals.
 
"The girls are excited for regionals because they know that our structure works, so there's a lot of buy-in for what we're trying to do," said Mahoney. "With that, we have the confidence now to not only test Stanford and hopefully gain some revenge on BYU (the Lopes' only loss this spring)."