ZACH ENGLUND
Sports Assistant
It has been an up and down season for the Pepperdine women’s basketball team. The Waves lost a home game, 69-60, against Santa Clara last week but rebounded with statement-making 76-73 win over Saint Mary’s this past Saturday.
A season marred with inconsistency has the Waves stuck just under the .500 mark, holding a 2-5 conference record and a 9-13 win-loss ratio overall. Pepperdine began the season winning six of its first eight games before dropping the next 11 of 13 contests.
The Waves hosted the Broncos of Santa Clara on Jan. 25, looking to cut their four-game losing streak against a northern California squad that had come off an exhausting double-overtime victory.
Neither Pepperdine (9-13, 2-5 WCC) nor Saint Mary’s (9-11, 3-4 WCC) established a big lead at any point in the game, a game which saw eight ties and 14 lead changes.
Trailing by only six points going into halftime, Pepperdine would step up its game when it counted most. With the game tied going into the last minute, freshman forward/center Teena Wickett’s basket inside gave the Waves a two-point lead. Saint Mary’s was not able to respond, and Pepperdine went on to earn its second West Coast Conference victory of the season, 76-73. The six-point deficit at halftime was erased in fewer than four minutes by the Waves, who went on a 13-6 run that help set up the dramatic finish.
Pepperdine shot almost 54 percent from the floor (14-for-27) and forced Saint Mary’s into 12 turnovers in which they scored 16 points with those extra possessions.
Head Coach Julie Rousseau said she thinks this win was just what the team needed in order to help turn things around, especially with injured players returning to the lineup.
“I was pleased, not pleased with everything, but pleased with how we played,” she said. “We’ve been getting better since we’ve had our entire team back from injuries, so that’s obviously one reason we’ve improved.
“Not only that, but many of the players were playing out of position because of the injuries, so now everyone is getting more comfortable in the roles they were used to having before.
Although injuries are never a good thing, Rousseau hopes that the added experience for some of the younger players will help her team in the long run.
“We hope it was a blessing in disguise,” she said. “We have more depth now because the players not used to playing a lot got more experience, and I think that will really help us later on.”
There are seven games left in the season, with their next match at Gonzaga today at 7 p.m., and Rousseau said that’s plenty of time to right the ship.
“That’s a lot of time, and we’re moving in the right direction,” she said. “There are peaks and valleys in this league, and now we’ve got to start our upswing and hopefully get to the mountaintop.”
02-01-2007
