Pepperdine University
Eastern Washington (CBI 1st Round)
Men's Hoops Season Ends at Eastern Washington
3/16/2016 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
CHENEY, Wash. -- Eastern Washington's long-range shooting led to the end of the season for the Pepperdine men's basketball team, as the Waves fell 79-72 in the first round of the College Basketball Invitational on Wednesday night at EWU's Reese Court.
The Waves finished with an 18-14 record for the second straight year. The Eagles (18-15), who entered the game ranking seventh nationally with 10.3 three-pointers per game, made 14 of them and will move on to the CBI quarterfinals.
Pepperdine fell behind by 11 points in the first half but rallied to take a 34-29 lead at halftime. However, EWU went up by double-digits again, this time by 12 with eight minutes left in the game, and there was no coming back from that deficit.
Junior guard Lamond Murray Jr. (Los Angeles, Calif./Bishop Montgomery HS) scored 20 of his team-high 24 points in the first half. Senior forward Jett Raines (Coppell, Texas/Coppell HS) had 13 points, all in the second half, in his final game, and added a career-high four blocked shots.
Senior forward Stacy Davis (Laveen, Ariz./Fairfax HS) had eight points and a game-high 14 rebounds. He wrapped up his marvelous career as Pepperdine's all-time leading scorer (1,786 points) and the second-leading rebounder (994), among many other entries in the Waves' records books.
Junior guard Amadi Udenyi (Oakland, Calif./De La Salle HS) had 10 points and six assists, while junior guard Jeremy Major (Pasadena, Calif./Maranatha HS) had seven points and six assists. Major passed Dane Suttle for fifth place on the Waves' all-time assist list and will head into his senior year on pace to break that career mark.
"I was very disappointed, more so in the second half to give up 50 points," Pepperdine Coach Marty Wilson said. "That's not a Pepperdine basketball team. I thought we made a lot of mental mistakes defensively from certain guys not helping off of certain guys that allowed guys to get comfortable. Then we gave up a lot of offensive rebounds where we were lax and didn't finish the possession. That was something we talked about -- long shots and long rebounds. We just didn't finish plays. I thought offensively we did enough, but we want to hang our hats on the defensive end and make it difficult for people to score. We didn't play Pepperdine basketball in the second half and that's the disappointing part."
Eastern Washington shot better from distance (14-for-32, 43.8% on three-pointers) than it did from close (10-for-32, 31.3% on two-pointers). The 14 three-pointers were the second-most given up by the Waves this season, trailing only the 16 that Gonzaga made in a December game played just about 19 miles away from tonight's game. The Eagles shot just 37.5% overall.
The Waves shot 41.5% from the field and made eight of 23 three-pointers (34.8%). Besides the threes, another sizeable difference came from the foul line, where Pepperdine was 10-for-19 and EWU was 17-for-20.
The Eagles went up 23-12 less than nine minutes in after their fifth three-pointer of the half. But it was 22-6 Waves the rest of the way. Murray started the streak with a three and hit three more down the stretch, including one to end the half, putting Pepperdine in front 34-29 at the break. EWU hit just two of its final 17 shots and made 28% of its shots in the second half.
But EWU made eight three-pointers in the second half and shot 46.9% from the field over the final 20 minutes, leading to a 50-point outburst after halftime. The Eagles went ahead 64-52 with eight minutes to go. Raines countered by scoring the game's next eight points to make it a four-point contest at 64-60 with 5 1/2 minutes left, but that was as close as the Waves would get.
The Eagles' Bodgan Bliznyuk scored a game-high 25 points (23 of them in the second half) and also had 11 rebounds for a double-double. Austin McBroom scored 24 points and made six three-pointers.
