By Michael Hurlbut
Assistant Sports Editor
You can’t stop them, you can only hope to contain them.
At least that’s what ESPN anchorman Stuart Scott would say of the Pepperdine women’s basketball team.
They have been playing with only nine players and most of those nine were playing injured to begin with, yet they continue to win.
The Waves will face a rough second half of their season on top of being short players on the bench.
They play four of their six remaining games on the road including two this weekend at USF and St. Mary’s. They also have back to back games the following weekend against Portland and Gonzaga. Those games will be played at Firestone Fieldhouse.
Friday’s game at USF pits the Waves against the fourth-place Lady Dons who just came off a heartbreaking one-point loss to Santa Clara over the weekend. They’ve proven they can hang with the top teams in the conference, but Head Coach Mark Trakh seems to think he has the answer to their opponents this weekend.
“We just need to play like we played against LMU in the second half, except we need to do that all game,” Trakh said.
This past Saturday’s victory at LMU was a televised tutorial in determination as the women came back from a 10-point first half deficit to rally for a 67-62 victory over the upstart Lions.
“He was pretty fired up in the locker room at halftime,” said senior Anna Lembke of Trakh.
Whatever Trakh said seemed to ignite the Waves as they stormed back at the start of the second half.
Junior forward Keani Christianson led the Waves with 16 points and was also a main factor in shutting down Lions center Adrianne Slaughter.
After scoring 23 points against the Waves on Wednesday, Christianson and senior Nadja Morgan held the 6-4 center to 10 points on 4 of 9 shooting.
“We tried to take away her left (hand) a little more like we were supposed to do in the first game,” said Christianson of the big LMU center.
Slaughter also proceeded to foul out of the game with three minutes left in the second half, allowing the Waves to go inside a bit more as the clock wound down.
The game was all LMU in the first half as it outshot and outrebounded the Waves in the first 20 minutes. However, down the stretch, free throw shooting was what led Pepperdine to victory. The Waves were 17 for 21 from the charity stripe while LMU was a paltry 13 for 24.
After battling back to take the lead at 63-60, junior guard Tamara McDonald assured the win with a steal and a layup with 14 seconds left to put away the Lions.
Despite being outrebounded 23-17 in the first half, the Waves worked the Lions on the boards in the second half by a 31-18 margin.
“We woke up the giants in the locker room at halftime,” Trakh said.
“Yeah, coach got us really fired up to win at halftime,” Christianson agreed. “We didn’t want to have two embarrassing losses in the same week.”
Meanwhile, the St. Mary’s Gaels are still holding on to third place with a 5-3 record. They have lost to Pepperdine, San Francisco, and suffered a double-overtime loss at Santa Clara this past weekend as well.
Pepperdine will once again be challenged with the twin tandem of Jermisha and Jerkisha Dosty.
Judging by the Waves’ rebounding performance in the second half of the LMU game, if they continue to play this well, every team in the conference is going to be hard-pressed to defeat the Waves.
February 07, 2002