Building steam for regionals, the Grand Canyon University Men's Ultimate team dropped its first match at the 2025 USA Ultimate Southwest Division I Regional Tournament in Tempe, then ran the table, finishing it off with a thrilling 11-10 victory over host team Arizona State University. The victory over the expanded field clinched the Lopes' 5^th consecutive conference championship.
 
In the previous three conference tournaments, the road was much simpler to earning the title: a win in the semifinal round and then in the title match, and you're in. This season, with the addition of the University of New Mexico in the now-five-team field, the organizers revamped the format of the tournament, forcing all five teams to play each other once to whittle the field back down to four before bracket play, and putting the top two pool play winners automatically in Sunday's championship match. The four Arizona teams were rude hosts to the newbies from Albuquerque, keeping the Lobos winless in pool play and eliminating them from Sunday's contention. For the 2^nd-seeded Lopes, the championship round seemed unattainable after a 13-8 loss to the top-seeded Sun Devils in their first match. The loss proved to be a wakeup call, however, as GCU then breezed through the rest of the pool-play field, dominating UNM, 15-2, outlasting the University of Arizona, 14-10, before finishing off the first round with a 15-6 win over Northern Arizona University. The U of A win proved to be the most important, since it gave the Lopes a 3-1 mark in pool play while tagging the Wildcats with their second loss, dropping them out of championship contention.
 
The bracket format forced the loser of the 1^st-place match to still stay motivated enough to play the 3^rd-place match winner for 2^nd place. To avoid that fate, the Lopes had to avenge the Round 1 loss to the Sun Devils, who went undefeated in pool play. The match lived up to its championship billing, with the two teams playing only the second match of the tournament decided by less than four points, and the Lopes (13-5 overall) avenging not only the loss the day before, but their own one-point loss involving the Sun Devils back in the pool-play rounds of New Year Fest in January.
 
The Lopes' final tournament of the 2025-26 season happens the weekend of GCU Commencement at the USAU Southwest D-I College Men's Regionals in Bakersfield, California, April 25 and 26. The Lopes have finished 8^th at the event in two of the last three years.
 
UPDATE: The Lopes lost a heartbreaker to the University of Southern California, 14-13, in the 13^th-Place Finals of the USAU Southwest D-I College Men's Regionals in Bakersfield, California. GCU finishes the 2025-26 season with an overall mark of 15-7.