PROVO, Utah – The Pepperdine men's basketball team had an answer to a big first-half run by BYU, but not for another one in the second half as the Cougars earned a 107-80 West Coast Conference victory on Thursday night.
 
BYU (16-7, 5-3) outscored Pepperdine (11-11, 4-4) by the count of 23-2 early in the game to go up by 21 points, though the Waves later countered with a 16-0 run to get the deficit down to six. It was 46-38 at halftime, but 13 straight Cougar points early in the second half pushed the lead back up to 20 points, where it stayed for the most of the remainder of the game.
 
BIG WAVES

• Senior forward Kameron Edwards (Rancho Cucamonga, Calif./Etiwanda HS) had a team-high 20 points, his ninth time this season scoring 20 or more.
• Junior guard Colbey Ross (Aurora, Colo./Eaglecrest HS) was in foul trouble all night after picking up two in the first three minutes, and his fourth less than five minutes into the second half. He finished with 16 points and seven assists in 28 minutes.
• Sophomore forward Kessler Edwards (Rancho Cucamonga, Calif./Etiwanda HS) scored 15 points on 6-for-9 shooting.
• Freshman guard Sedrick Altman (Rialto, Calif./Colony HS) matched his season high with 11 points.
• Sophomore center Victor Ohia Obioha (Owerri, Nigeria/Hillcrest HS) scored a season-high 10 points and tied his season high with seven rebounds. He made all five of his shots.

KEY STATS 

• Pepperdine was outshot 61.2% to 49.1%.
• BYU was unstoppable from outside, making a school-record-tying 17 three-pointers on 28 attempts (60.7%). The Waves went 6-for-16 (37.5%).
• BYU had six players score in double-figures. Jake Toolson scored 25 and made seven three-pointers.

PLAY BY PLAY
 
With the game tied at 5-5, BYU went on a 23-2 run over more than seven minutes. The Cougars would take their biggest lead of the half of 22 points at 34-12 with 7 1/2 minutes left, and then again at 36-14. But the Waves came alive at that point, and reeled off 16 straight points to make it 36-30. Kameron Edwards and Altman each scored five points and Ohia Obioha had a pair of baskets during the spurt. Later, junior guard Keith Smith (Seattle, Wash./Rainier Beach HS/Oregon) sank a three-pointer just before the halftime buzzer to make it 46-38 at halftime.
 
At 48-41, BYU hit three three-pointers in a 13-0 run to push the lead back up to 20 at 61-41 with 17 minutes to go. The Waves didn't have another run in them, and the teams traded points for most of the rest of the game.
 
NOTABLES 

• With his 16 points, Ross passed Bird Averitt for 10th place on Pepperdine's all-time scoring list. He now has 1,542 points.
• Keith Smith saw action for the first time since November 16, when he suffered a knee injury at Abilene Christian. He had missed 17 consecutive games.
• This was the 16th time this season that Pepperdine was without at least three injured players. It's also the 19th time in 22 games they've been without multiple players.

UP NEXT
 
Pepperdine is at PCH Cup rival Loyola Marymount on Saturday (Feb. 1) at 3 p.m. It will be televised locally by Spectrum SportsNet and fans can also listen online via WaveCasts with Al Epstein on the call.