Edwards' Career-High 37 Leads Waves Over Pacific

Thursday, January 21

Malibu, Calif.

6:00 p.m. PT

Pepperdine University

6-6,2-1WCC

Pacific

4-2,2-1WCC

Team	1	2	F
Pacific	20	48	68
Pepperdine	44	41	85

Kessler Edwards

Photo by: Martin A. Folb

1/21/2021 9:22:00 PM | Men's Basketball

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By: by Athletic Communications

MALIBU, California – Kessler Edwards poured in a career-high 37 points and scored his milestone 1,000th career point to lead the Pepperdine men's basketball team to an 85-68 win over Pacific in West Coast Conference play on Thursday night.

The Waves (6-6, 2-1) jumped on the Tigers (5-2, 2-1) early, going on a 21-2 run near the start of the game and then maintained a sizeable advantage for the entire contest.

BIG WAVES

Junior forward Kessler Edwards (Rancho Cucamonga, Calif./Etiwanda HS) went 11-for-18 from the floor, knocked down a career-high six three-pointers and went 9-for-9 from the foul line. His previous career high was 30 points against Central Arkansas in December 2019. He also picked up his first double-double of the season with 11 rebounds.
Junior guard Darryl Polk Jr. (Long Beach, Calif./Long Beach Poly HS) was the only other Wave in double-figures, as he went 4-for-5 from the field, made two three-pointers, and scored a season-high 11 points.
Senior guard Colbey Ross (Aurora, Colo./Eaglecrest HS) was again terrific in leading the offense, collecting a season-high-tying 11 assists. He had 10 assists on Saturday vs. Portland and this is the third time in his career he's had back-to-back double-digit assist games. Ross also scored seven points.
Junior guard Jade' Smith (Oakland, Calif./St. Joseph Notre Dame HS) scored nine points and had three assists.

KEY STATS

The Waves won despite being outshot 47.3% to 45.9%.
Pepperdine had advantages at the three-point line (making a season-high-tying 12 of 24, to the Tigers' 6-for-21) and at the free throw line (17-for-21 vs. 10-for-16).
The Waves had a 40-29 rebounding advantage and parlayed 13 offensive rebounds into a 14-6 edge in second-chance points.
Pepperdine had 25 assists on 28 made field goals.
Pacific was led by Pierre Crockrell II's 19 points.

PLAY BY PLAY

Pacific hit a three-pointer to open the scoring, but that would be the Tigers' only lead. Pepperdine immediately ripped off a 21-2 run over 5 1/2 minutes, with Edwards scoring 10 points as the Waves went up 21-5 with a little more 13 minutes to go in the half. Smith had five points in an 8-0 run to make the score 29-8. Polk Jr. had five points in a 7-0 run as the lead grew to 36-10 with less than four minutes in the half. It was 44-20 at halftime as the Waves limited the Tigers to 30.0% shooting.

Pepperdine continued to pour it on in the second half, taking a 30-point lead for the first time at 58-28 on an Edwards three-pointer. The Waves' largest lead was 35 points at 77-42 with 8:44 left after a three-pointer by sophomore forward Jan Zidek (Prague, Czech Republic). Pacific cut the lead in half over the final eight minutes, but the Waves still won comfortably.

NOTABLES

Edwards needed 28 points to become Pepperdine's 44th player in program history to score 1,000 career points, and he achieved that in the second half.
The Waves won a regular-season game against the Tigers for the first time since February 2017.

UP NEXT

Pepperdine plays its next two games against BYU, visiting Provo on Saturday (Jan. 23) at 7 p.m. PT, and hosting the Cougars on Wednesday (Jan. 27) at noon. There will be audio-only WaveCasts with Al Epstein at PepperdineWaves.com for both games. Saturday's game will be on ESPN2.