Waves Falter in Second Half at Nevada

Tuesday, November 30

Reno, Nev.

7:00 p.m. PT

Pepperdine University

2-7,0-0WCC

Nevada

4-4,0-0Mountain West

Team	1	2	F
Pepperdine	32	34	66
Nevada	35	44	79

Houston Mallette

Photo by: Morgan Davenport

11/30/2021 9:26:00 PM | Men's Basketball

Box Score Box Score

By: by Athletic Communications

RENO, Nevada – The Pepperdine men's basketball team kept things close for 20 minutes, but a rough second-half stretch helped Nevada earn a 79-66 victory over the Waves on Tuesday night.

Pepperdine (2-7) trailed just 35-32 at the break, but Nevada (4-4) went up 67-42 midway through the second half. The Waves fought back to make it a single-digit deficit late in the contest.

BIG WAVES

Freshman guard Mike Mitchell Jr. (San Jose, Calif./Archbishop Mitty HS) had team highs of 12 points and four assists, plus five rebounds.
Freshman guard Houston Mallette (Alameda, Calif./Pacifica Christian HS) scored 10 points, all of them coming in the first half, and had five rebounds.
Freshman forward Maxwell Lewis (Las Vegas, Nev./AZ Compass Prep) recorded nine points, three rebounds and three assists.
Graduate transfer forward Keith Fisher III (Los Angeles, Calif./Illinois State) and senior guard Jade' Smith (Oakland, Calif./St. Joseph Notre Dame HS) both had seven points and a team-high eight rebounds.

PLAY BY PLAY

Mallette scored five early points to get the Waves out to a 5-2 lead, but Nevada came back with a 9-0 run. Mitchell had five points as the Waves responded with a 9-0 run of their own, putting them up 14-11. Mallette scored five straight points to give Pepperdine a 22-17 lead, the team's biggest of the half. The Waves' last lead came at 30-29 after two free throws by Fisher, but Nevada went into the break with a 35-32 lead.

At 39-36 in the second half, the Wolf Pack went on a 14-2 run to make it 53-38. At 56-42, they hit three three-pointers in an 11-0 run to take their biggest lead at 67-42 with 10:39 to play. The Waves chipped away at the lead, holding Nevada scoreless for nearly six minutes and going on a 12-0 run to make it 70-58 with a little more than three minutes left. A three-point play by Lewis made it a nine-point game at 73-64 with two minutes to go, but that would be as close as the Waves would get.

KEY STATS

The Waves were outshot 46.2% to 33.8%.
Nevada had a 34-16 edge in points in the paint.
The Waves' bench outscored the Wolf Pack 26-8.
Nevada was led by Grant Sherfield's 24 ponts, 10 assists and eight rebounds.

NOTABLE

Newcomers scored 40 of the Waves' 66 points.
Smith had three steals, and he now needs just five more to get into Pepperdine's all-time top 10.
Nevada Coach Steve Alford missed the game after it was announced earlier in the day that he had tested positive for COVID-19.
This was Pepperdine's first trip to Reno since December 1988.

UP NEXT

Pepperdine is on the road again on Friday (Dec. 3) at UC Santa Barbara at 7 p.m. The game will be streamed on ESPN+ and there will be an audio-only WaveCasts at PepperdineWaves.com.