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It was not the perfect ending they had hoped for, and it was not the level of basketball they knew they could play. Saturday, in their lowest scoring game all season, the Pepperdine women’s basketball team fell 58-39 to Loyola Marymount University, handing the Lions their first West Coast Conference title.
The two-time defending WCC champion Waves dropped their first game in six games and are currently 8-4 in the conference. The Lions improved to 11-1 in WCC play.
“LMU played with a sense of urgency,” assistant coach Jody Wynn said. “They weren’t going to let anything stand in the way of capturing a WCC championship.”
One more week and two more conference games will determine the Waves’ fate. They close their regular-season schedule with home games against St. Mary’s College and University of San Francisco.
Two wins would still put the Pepperdine squad in the running for the No. 2 spot in conference, and a second place finish would earn the Waves a bye in the WCC tournament in early March.
“It’s a big advantage for the first and second place teams to get the double bye,” Wynn said. “They get to go straight to the semifinals. It’s a well-deserved reward that is reflective of their performance in the 14 regular-season games.”
Saturday, in the opening minutes of play, the Waves appeared to be on top of their game. With 8:39 on the clock in the first half, Pepperdine led 15-14, but an LMU basket spurred a 16-3 Lions run.
From that point, the game slipped away from the Pepperdine team as it caused unforced turnovers (15 for the night) and couldn’t seem to put the shots away.
“We didn’t find other ways to generate the emotion and energy we needed to win,” Wynn said. “Our defense was not leading to easy baskets on offense.”
LMU capitalized on Pepperdine’s inability to stop the ball inside as they outscored the Waves 16 to 4 in the paint.
“LMU played a good game against us defensively,” Wynn said. “You have to give them credit, but it wasn’t a performance we haven’t seen before. We didn’t move the ball as well as we had been doing recently, and we didn’t take good shots.”
Heading into the break LMU led 31-18, and the second half proved to be even more painful for the Waves as they were outshot (28.6 to the Lions’ 45.3 percent) and outrebounded (42-38 for the night).
The Pepperdine bench only scored seven bench points to LMU’s 20.
Guard Shandrika Lee led Pepperdine’s struggling offense with 10 points. Junior guard Shanell Law had nine points and a season-high nine rebounds.
As graduating seniors, Lee and Funn will play their final home games in orange and blue this week. They are currently the Waves’ No. 1 and 2 scorers, averaging 14.0 and 9.4 points per game respectively. Lee leads Pepperdine’s squad in assists with 67 for the season and Funn grabs an average of 5.8 boards per game to top the chart for her team.
“Nicole and Shandrika have been our starting backcourt all year long,” Wynn said. “We’d like to send them off on a good note with a final victory at the Firestone Fieldhouse.”
The Waves look for series sweeps against St. Mary’s Thursday at 7:00 and USF Saturday at 7 p.m.
“These are two big games for us,” Wynn said. “We have to win both to have a chance at second place in conference. It’s a matter of playing two games at the conference tournament versus three or maybe four. No one has ever won the tournament who had to win four.”
Submitted February 26, 2004
MALIBU, CA
