This Saturday the women’s basketball team will take on Santa Clara at 2 p.m. as a part of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association’s (WBCA) Pink Zone event.
The WBCA’s Pink Zone is an international program that involves coaches and players raising awareness of breast cancer on the court on campuses and in their communities.
Last season’s WBCA Pink Zone campaign raised more than $1.3 million garnered more than 912000 fans brought together more than 1600 teams and organizations and broke 56 school event attendance records. The organization now looks to Pepperdine and Santa Clara this weekend for support in combating breast cancer.
On Saturday the Lady Waves (14-8 5-3) traveled to Loyola Marymount to face the Lions in their second meeting of the 2010 season. The Waves defeated LMU a second time in the West Coast Conference (WCC) 72-62 and earning Pepperdine 1 1/2 points in the PCH Cup Challenge.
Pepperdine sophomore guard Jazmine Jackson scored a season-high 20 points for the Waves sophomore guard Katie Mention racked 11 and freshman guard Shay Cooney-Williams tallied 12.
Waves’ Head Coach Julie Rousseau was proud of her team’s performance against local rival LMU.
“Our kids played well she said. We had been practicing really hard all week long on our defense and I think that showed in the game. It was a team effort.”
Despite some of Pepperdine’s starters being injured during the game the Waves still fought hard and made up for the losses.
“That’s the team effort that we are going to continue to need Rousseau said.
In addition, the Waves’ strong defense has been improving during the season with visual results.
We did a very good job defensively she said. That’s the reason why we played so well. It fuels our fire when we have a good defensive effort. It gave us a lot of confidence out there and that showed up on the offensive effort as well.”
LMU’s weak point was their three-point line shooting according to Rousseau. Loyola only hit six out of twenty shots from the three-point line but they made 18 out of 18 free throws which kept them close in the game.
“Our pressure contributed to getting them out of their offensive flow and really disrupting their offense Rousseau said.
Pepperdine will play San Francisco tonight at 7 p.m. at the Firestone Fieldhouse.
We really hope they fans come out and support us Rousseau said. There is not let up in them there is no quit is us and so it is going to be a dogfight.”
“We are thinking that our inside presence is one that we have been relying on all year.” They’re [USF] very athletic very competitive and are good shooters Rousseau said. Our defense is going to be tested again.”
