Final Stats

Box Score

WEST POINT, N.Y. - The Pepperdine women's basketball team dropped its regular-season opener on Friday night, falling 63-53 at Army.

The young Waves held a halftime lead against the veteran Amy squad, but couldn't keep it through the third quarter, getting outscored 22-11 in the period.

"They have seniors that know how to take the next step in the game, that was the difference," said head coach Ryan Weisenberg, who enters his third season at the helm for the Waves. "We came out strong in the first minute of the second half, but they hit a few shots and it just threw us off. After that we had a tough time getting back on the same page."

Pepperdine grabbed a three-point lead on a 3-pointer by Paige Fecske (Studio City, Calif./Chaminade HS) early in the second quarter and would take that advantage into the break thanks to an Erica Ogwumike (Cypress, Texas/Cypress Woods HS) jumper. Ogwumike led the Waves with eight points in the first half. Pepperdine also held Army to 34.4 percent shooting in the first two quarters of play.

It was early in the second half that Army would take back the lead. The Black Knights hit three 3-pointers in the first three minutes of the third quarter, going up 34-30 on a Kelsey Minato long ball. Aimee Oertner followed with a layup that made it a six-point game.

Pepperdine pulled to within one on a Kayla Blair (Fairfield, Calif./Vanden HS) three-point-play at the 3:37 mark in the third quarter, but Army closed the period on a 9-2 run to take a 47-39 lead into the fourth. The Waves closed the gap to six points three times in the fourth, with the last coming just under a minute to play, but couldn't get any closer.

"I like the fact that we kept it close to the end," said Weisenberg. "This game could have easily gotten out of hand and we kept fighting all the way to the end. We have a young team and a lot of these things are fixable, we just need to stay on the same page. That's what we're going to focus on as a coaching staff."

Minato led all scorers in the game with 28 points and each team had two players score in double figures. Fecske led the Waves with 13 points, going 3-for-4 from three, and Olivia Ogwumike (Cypress, Texas/Cypress Woods HS) scored 11 points.

The loss opens the Waves' season at 0-1 as they stay on the road and head to Albany for a game on Sunday. Tip-off for that contest will be 10 a.m. and it can be heard live on WaveCasts.