THE FACTS - After three games at home to start the season, the Pepperdine men's basketball team now plays five straight away from Firestone Fieldhouse. The stretch begins on Monday night just down the road at UCLA. The Waves are coming off their first win of the season.
GAME #4 - Monday (Nov. 23) at Pauley Pavilion: Pepperdine (1-2) at UCLA (1-1) at 8 p.m.
TELEVISION - The Pepperdine-UCLA game will be shown live on FOX Sports West. Bill Macdonald and Don MacLean are the announcers.
ON THE WEB - Subscribers to "Wave Casts" can catch all Pepperdine men's basketball games on the internet at www.pepperdinesports.com. Veteran play-by-play man Al Epstein, now in his 25th season with the Waves, is behind the microphone. Home games will have live audio and video, while road games will be audio only. Go to the Pepperdine Athletics website and look for the WaveCasts link. An annual pass costs $69.95 and monthly subscriptions are also available. Live statistics will be available for all home matches free of charge, and links are provided to the home team's website when the Waves are on the road.
UCLA - Pepperdine trails the all-time series with UCLA, 15-4. The Waves won three times in the 1940s early in the series, but the the Bruins won 12 straight between 1949 and 1999. Tom Asbury was 0-2 against UCLA during his first stint as head coach. The streak ended with perhaps the Waves' signature win of this decade, a memorable 85-78 victory at Pauley Pavilion on Nov. 28, 2001 against the #10-ranked Bruins. That was the last time Pepperdine beat a top 25 team on the road and was victorious against a top 10 team. The only meeting since then was an 85-83 UCLA home victory in December 2004, when Jordan Farmar made a lay-up with 4.7 seconds left and Alex Acker missed a three-pointer at the buzzer.
LAST GAME - Keion Bell helped rescue Pepperdine by scoring the team's final 12 points of a 72-70 comeback victory over Cal State San Bernardino on Friday. He scored 18 of his game-high 22 points in the second half, including 12 in the final three minutes. CSUSB, traditionally a strong team at the NCAA Division II level, led by as many as 12 points in the second half before the Waves rallied. Bell's putback with 40 seconds left put Pepperdine ahead 70-69 with 40 seconds left, and he added two free throws with 19.8 seconds left. CSUSB made one of two free throws with 12.1 seconds left, got an offensive rebound, but missed a potential game-tying jumper at the buzzer.
SUPER SOPHS - Last season, Pepperdine's eight-man freshman class scored more than half of the Waves' points (57.4%). After three games, the now-sophomore class has contributed 73.7% of Pepperdine's scoring.
BELL'S BIG START - Keion Bell scored 20 points against Pacific, 21 against Long Beach State and 22 against Cal State San Bernardino. Last year as a freshman, despite being Pepperdine's leading scorer (12.9 ppg), he had a total of only three 20-point games the entire season (none that were back-to-back). The last Pepperdine player to score 20 or more in three straight games in Tyrone Shelley in March 2008. The last to do it four games in a row was Glen McGowan in January 2005. The last member of the Waves to start the season with three 20-point games was Tom Lewis in 1987-88. The last to start a season with more than three was Dane Suttle Sr. with six in 1982-83.
MORE BELL - Keion Bell is saving his best for last. He's averaged 6.0 points in the first half and 15.0 points after halftime ... His eight assists against Cal State San Bernardino were a career high.
TEAM CAPTAIN - Mychel Thompson was selected as team captain for 2009-10 after a landslide vote by his teammates. The junior forward is Pepperdine's only player that has been with the team for two full seasons. Now in his third year as a starter, he is averaging 8.8 points for his career and made 91 three-pointers.
YOUTUBE SENSATION - Keion Bell, a preseason All-WCC first team selection, got Pepperdine a ton of publicity in mid-October. At Blue & Orange Madness, Pepperdine's event to kick off the start of practice, the sophomore guard finished up the dunk contest by leaping over five teammates and slamming it home. A Pepperdine fan happened to record the dunk on his iPhone and uploaded it onto YouTube. It quickly spread around the internet and at last check had nearly 1.1 million hits. ESPN's SportsCenter picked up the video and made the dunk the #2 Play of the Day.
WCC PRESEASON POLL - According to the WCC's coaches, the Waves are predicted to finish seventh in the conference. Their poll went in the following order: Gonzaga, Portland, Saint Mary's, San Francisco and Santa Clara (tied), San Diego, Pepperdine and Loyola Marymount. Several national publications and websites have differing opinions on the Waves, including fourth (The Sporting News), fifth (The Sports Network), sixth (Athlon and Lindy's) and seventh (Rivals.com, CBSSports.com and CollegeHoops.net).
ROSTER - Pepperdine returns 11 letterwinners from last season (believed to be among the most in school history). There are also five newcomers, bringing the roster total to 16. There are no seniors on the squad, and 12 of the 16 players are underclassmen. The roster features four juniors, seven sophomores and five true freshmen. Twelve are on scholarship and four are walk-ons.
RETURNERS - Four of the five starters from last year's team return (Keion Bell, Taylor Darby, Corbin Moore and Mychel Thompson). Pepperdine's returning players account for 82.5% percent of last year's scoring (1629/1974), 88.3% of the rebounds (919/1041), 65.4% of the assists (223/341), 95.0% of the blocked shots (96/101) and 77.2% of the steals (166/215).
NON-CONFERENCE SCHEDULE - Tom Asbury believes in preparing his team for league play with a difficult non-conference slate of games, and so that's what the Waves are in the midst of. The Waves play six games against non-conference teams that took part in the postseason last year: Portland State, UCLA and Utah made the NCAA Tournament, Miami (Fla.) was in the NIT, Wyoming was in the College Basketball Invitational and Pacific was in the inaugural CollegeInsider.com Tournament. Nine of the 16 non-conference games are at home.
TELEVISION - The Waves are slated to appear on television several times once again in 2009-10. Six games will be shown locally - Nov. 23 at UCLA on Fox Sports West, Jan. 14 vs. Santa Clara on ESPNU, Jan. 21 at Gonzaga on Prime Ticket (delayed), Jan. 30 vs. San Diego on Prime Ticket, Feb. 18 vs. Portland on Prime Ticket and Feb. 20 vs. Gonzaga on Fox Sports West.
TOM ASBURY - Now in his second stint in charge of the Waves is coaching great Tom Asbury. He returned to Malibu prior to the 2008-09 campaign to become the Waves' head coach again after 14 seasons away. Asbury was previously at Pepperdine for nine years as an assistant coach (1980-88) and then the next six as the head coach (1989-94). He went on to serve as head coach at Kansas State from 1995-2000 and was an assistant coach at Alabama from 2004-07. Asbury went 125-59 (.679) in his first head coaching job at Pepperdine and took the Waves to the postseason five times in six years with three NCAA Tournament appearances (1991, '92, '94) and two in the NIT (1989, '93). Pepperdine won three regular-season WCC titles and the school's only three WCC Tournament championships came under Asbury. Prior to the start of the 2009-10 season, his seven-year record at Pepperdine was 134-82 (.620) and his 13-year record as a head coach was 219-170 (.563).
ASSISTANTS - Upon his return, Tom Asbury wanted to find assistants with a passion for Pepperdine and an understanding of its mission, so he turned to three former student-athletes. It's believed that Duke and Pepperdine have the only two college basketball staffs where the assistant coaches are all alums. Associate head coach Marty Wilson (1985-89) and assistant coaches Damin Lopez (1990-94) and Will Kimble (2001-03) played in three different eras, all successful. In the 13 seasons that made up their playing careers, Pepperdine went a combined 261-135 (.659), had 12 winning seasons, won six WCC regular-season titles and three WCC tournament titles, and made six NCAA Tournaments and four NITs.
LAST SEASON - Tom Asbury's return to Pepperdine brought much-needed stability to the program in his first season back. With only five players returning, Asbury and his new staff brought in 10 newcomers well after the regular letter-of-intent signing period. The young Waves posted a 9-23 overall record but got much better as the year went on, placing sixth in the WCC with a 5-9 record and winning a first-round game at the WCC Tournament. Keion Bell was named to the WCC All-Freshman team after averaging a team-best 12.9 ppg.
PEPPERDINE HISTORY - This is the 72nd season of Pepperdine basketball, and the Waves opened 2009-10 with an all-time record of 1,111-910 (.550). Pepperdine has been to the NCAA Tournament 13 times (last in 2002), and has won 12 West Coast Conference regular-season titles (last in 2002) and three WCC Tournament crowns (last in 1994).
BEST IN THE WEST - Pepperdine has long been one of the top Division I programs on the West Coast. Over the 31-season period from the 1978-79 season through the 2008-09 campaign, of the 32 schools that currently play Division I basketball in California, Oregon or Washington, the Waves began the 2009-10 season ranking third overall in postseason appearances (16) and fifth in both wins (525) and winning percentage (.565) over the past 31 years.
WAVES IN THE PROS - This is the 34th consecutive season where at least one Pepperdine alum has been on an NBA roster. Currently in the NBA is Yakhouba Diawara, now in his fourth season overall and his second with the Miami Heat. A total of 16 former Pepperdine players have gone on to play in the NBA, most notably Dennis Johnson (the 1979 NBA Finals MVP) and Doug Christie (a 15-year NBA veteran who was a mainstay on the All-Defensive Team). Some recent players have been playing in foreign countries, including Alex Acker (Italy), Tezale Archie (Netherlands), Brandon Armstrong (Venezuela), Gerald Brown (Poland), Jelani Gardner (Greece), Kelvin Gibbs (Germany), Chase Griffin (Germany), Dana Jones (Switzerland) and Glen McGowan (Dominican Republic). Robert "Hollywood" Turner, formerly a member of the Harlem Globetrotters, is now playing in Finland.
ABOUT PEPPERDINE - Pepperdine boasts a one-of-a-kind athletic department with unprecedented success for a school of its size. The Waves have won a total of nine NCAA championships in five different men's sports - one of just 14 schools to have accomplished this feat. Of the 14, Pepperdine is the only non-BCS school and has by far the smallest enrollment. The majority of Pepperdine's teams are ranked nationally year after year and compete for conference and national titles.
