For Waves, It’S All About Revenge Pepperdine Makes Amends For Loss At Gu With Decisive Victory That Ties Wcc Race

Pepperdine’s Kelvin Gibbs was direct and sincere.

Saturday night’s 80-69 West Coast Conference men’s basketball win over Gonzaga was about revenge, pure and simple.

The Waves, Gibbs explained, had something to prove to themselves and the college basketball world in general after having blown a 15-point lead in losing to the Bulldogs nine days earlier in Martin Centre.

“We’ve been waiting for this game ever since we lost to them up there,” said the bulky 6-foot-6 senior forward, who played a key role in helping Pepperdine snap GU’s 11-game winning streak and pull even with the Bulldogs at the top of the WCC standings. “We knew we shouldn’t have lost to them up there (in Spokane) - not being up by 15. You can’t do that. So ever since, we’ve been waiting for another chance.”

And the Waves (19-6 overall, 9-1 in the WCC) grabbed that chance and squeezed it almost as tightly as it defended the slow-starting Bulldogs (19-6, 9-1).

With a rare sellout crowd of 3,314 on hand at Firestone Fieldhouse to celebrate homecoming and cheer on the Waves in this first-place showdown, Pepperdine all but smothered GU’s perimeter offense and thoroughly frustrated Richie Frahm, the WCC’s leading scorer, in the process. Frahm, who came in averaging 17.3 points per game - including 22 in Friday night’s rout of Loyola Marymount - was held without a field goal. He missed all 12 of the shots he attempted, including seven 3-pointers, and finished with six points, all from the free-throw line.

GU point guard Matt Santangelo managed to put up 15 points, but he, Frahm and reserve guard Ryan Floyd were a combined 6 for 22 from the field.

And Pepperdine, behind Craig Lewis’ career-high 20 points, exploited that lack of production on the perimeter to sprint to another early lead, which they managed to protect this time.

The Waves, who also got 19 points from Brandon Armstrong and 12 from Gibbs, beat the Bulldogs to death on the boards in pushing their 45-32 halftime lead to 67-48 midway through the second half. They then withstood a 12-0 GU run and long scoring drought to win their ninth straight home game and split their regular-season series with the Zags for the fourth straight year.

“It’s all in a day’s work, I guess,” said Pepperdine coach Jan van Breda Kolff, whose team when almost 6 minutes without scoring when GU made its final run. “There are ebbs and flows and highs and lows in every game and, hopefully, you finish up strong.

“I thought we did a lot of positive things up there (in Spokane) last time, but we didn’t finish as strong as we’d have liked. Tonight we had a bad stretch there about the 10-minute mark, but came back strong in the last three minutes.”

GU mounted its comeback behind a full-court press that produced turnovers on five consecutive Pepperdine possessions and narrowed the deficit to 67-60 with 4:15 left. That’s when Gibbs bulled his way inside for a putback bucket that seemed to reenergize the Waves, and it was over.

Bulldogs coach Mark Few said he would have like to have pressed more, but the three early fouls that forced Mike Nilson, the point man on his press, to the bench made that inadvisable until midway through the second half.

“It was a tough environment to come into,” Few added, “but we just got beat to too many balls, especially in that first half. They got us back on our heels again, just like they did in The Kennel.”

The Bulldogs were outrebounded 43-35 and allowed Pepperdine to pull down 14 offensive boards.

“They played a lot more physical than we did,” Few admitted. “Usually we like that, but tonight we didn’t respond.”

Of Frahm’s 0-fer, Few added, “I think he got a little bit frustrated out there. But the deal with Richie is that we want him to keep shooting. He’s still one of the best shooters in the country.”

Van Breda Kolff noted that his team seems to learn from its first encounters against good shooters. On the road they gave up five 3-pointers to Santa Clara’s Nathan Fast and San Francisco’s Ali Thomas, and four to Portland’s Ryan Jones.

But at home they held Fast, Thomas and Frahm scoreless from 3-point range and allowed Jones only one long-range basket.

“So the four best shooters that have come into our place have combined to make one 3,” van Breda Kolff said. “We’ve done a good job the second time around of shutting those good scorers down and, hopefully, we can do it again if we face one of those teams a third time.”

GU is hoping for the third meeting come WCC tournament time, but before that they face four more regular-season games, including Thursday night’s home matchup against troublesome San Diego. “We just need to get home, regroup and shore up our rebounding after this debacle,” Few said.

Pepperdine 80, Gonzaga 69

Gonzaga (19-6, 9-1) - Frahm 0-12 6-6 6, Cavalry 7-11 4-6 19, Dench 2-2 0-0 4, Santangelo 5-10 4-6 15, Nilson 2-4 2-2 6, Floyd 1-5 0-0 2, Spink 3-6 3-6 9, Gourde 4-5 0-0 8. Totals 24-55 19-26 69.

Pepperdine (19-6, 9-1) - Prince 2-6 0-1 4, Gibbs 3-7 6-8 12, Sheppard 3-5 0-1 6, Armstrong 8-18 0-0 19, Archie 2-7 2-3 6, Lewis 7-12 3-3 20, Fomby 1-1 0-0 2, Minihan 0-1 0-0 0, Lalazarian 3-6 3-7 11, Suitt 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 29-63 14-23 80.

Halftime-Pepperdine 45, Gonzaga 32. 3-point goals-Gonzaga 2-16 (Cavalry 1-2, Santangelo 1-3, Nilson 0-2, Floyd 0-2, Frahm 0-7), Pepperdine 8-20 (Lewis 3-5, Armstrong 3-6, Lalazarian 2-3, Archie 0-1, Minihan 0-1, Gibbs 0-4). Fouled out-Nilson, Prince, Gibbs, Sheppard. Rebounds-Gonzaga 35 (Santangelo 7), Pepperdine 43 (Sheppard 10). Assists-Gonzaga 11 (Santangelo 5), Pepperdine 14 (Archie 6). Total fouls-Gonzaga 19, Pepperdine 24. A-3,314.