Final Stats

Box Score

PROVO, Utah - The Pepperdine women's basketball team couldn't hold an early lead on the road against BYU as Lexi Eaton took over the game with a career-high 37 points to down the Waves 77-58 on Thursday night.

Pepperdine was neck-and-neck with the second-place Cougars in the first half, but couldn't keep pace as the home team pulled away to start the second half.

The Waves held a five-point advantage early in the first half before Eaton turned it on and took over for the Cougars. Eaton scored 24 first-half points on 9-of-14 shooting to help BYU take a 36-26 lead into the break. The Waves got scoring from six different players in the half, but shot just 32 percent to fall behind.

A 12-4 run to open second half put the home team up by 18. BYU shot 73.3 percent through the first 10 minutes of the second half to extend the lead past 20. A late 7-0 Pepperdine run made it a 14-point game, but BYU answered with seven-straight points of its own to push it back to a 73-52 game.

Eaton finished the game shooting 14-of-26 from the floor and 5-of-10 from the 3-point line. She also led all players with 14 rebounds in the game. BYU finished the game shooting 50.8 percent after shooting nearly 55 percent in the second half.

After a cold-shooting first half, the Waves upped their shooting percentage to 43.8 percent in the second period, but could never get hot enough to make a run late. Bria Richardson (Hawthorne, Calif./Serra HS) led Pepperdine with 15 points and Allie Green (Sacramento, Calif./Sacramento HS) had 10.

The Cougars had a 36-16 points in the paint advantage, while the visiting Waves won the turnover battle 12-9 and had 15 bench points to 11 for BYU.

The loss drops Pepperdine to 6-17, 1-11 WCC and moves the Cougars to 18-5, 10-2 WCC. The Waves will be back in action on Saturday when they head to San Diego for a 2 p.m. game.