By Michael Hurlbut
Assistant Sports Editor
Call it fate. Call it a Cinderella story. It’s definitely labeled as success, just don’t confuse it with luck.
The Pepperdine women’s basketball team is the 2002 West Coast Conference Champion. The conference season could not have ended any better way.
After narrowly escaping past a tough Gonzaga team in the first round of the WCC Tournament at the University of San Diego Jenny Craig Pavilion, the Waves sent a message to the rest of the conference by silencing San Francisco in the second round.
Now it was payback time. The Waves lost their last regular season game at the hands of the Santa Clara Broncos.
Yet over 40 minutes on Sunday, the women slowly exacted their revenge, picking apart the Broncos, who watched the win slip from their hands like sand.
After storming the court and chanting to the throngs of screaming family, friends and fans, the champions paraded around the court in “WCC Champions” T-shirts.
Junior guard Damaris Hinojosa was presented as the MVP of the Tournament while senior center Nadja Morgan made the All-Tournament team. “We were just ecstatic,” said senior forward Anna Lembke. “We were so fired up to be champions.”
Senior forward Sarah Richen got hold of the WCC Champions sign and refused to relinquish it, showing everyone in her path what she was a part of. “She wouldn’t even let us touch it during dinner!” Morgan said.
Each member of the team took turns cutting a piece of the net from the south goal until Morgan was left with the final cut and the net waving wildly over her head.
It was an historic occasion for the women. They became the first Pepperdine women’s basketball team to win the WCC Championship Tournament . It is the second time in three years the Waves have advanced to the NCAA Tournament.
The berth in the tournament is only the fourth ever by the women, marking the improvements the team has made in recent seasons.
“I’m proud of our leaders on this team,” head coach Mark Trakh said. “They are the ones who got us here.”
As the women begin gearing up for their first-round game on Saturday at the Lloyd Noble Center in Oklahoma, Trakh could not stop beaming with pride in practice.
“I’ve watched the WCC final on tape six times already,” he said last Wednesday. “I’m so excited for the tournament.”
With the momentum from the WCC Tournament, the Waves are looking to be a force to be reckoned with in March.
‘NOVA: THE STRAIGHT SKINNY
Time to put on your dancing shoes because the band is just getting warmed up.
The No. 8 seed Pepperdine women’s basketball team takes off today for Norman, Okla., to face the No. 9 Villanova Wildcats on Saturday in a 4 p.m. first-round game of the Big Dance, the NCAA Championship Tournament.
The lady Waves earned an automatic bid after taking first place at the West Coast Conference Tournament in San Diego last weekend.
Villanova finished in a tie for third in the Big East Conference at 12-4, ending the regular season with an overall record of 19-10.
They lost to eventual conference champion UConn in the Big East tournament 83-39 after stopping Miami 68-49 in the tourney opener.
The Waves have faced the Wildcats only once before in the championship game of the 1998 PNC Wildcat Classic at Villanova. The Waves triumphed in overtime 72-67.
The last time the lady Waves were in the NCAA Tourney was in 2000. This marks their second trip to the tournament in three seasons.
March 14, 2002