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.