Tough Teams Test Pepperdine : Coach Readies Waves Cagers for Conference Battles

On the day before Pepperdine’s basketball team was to leave for road games at Marshall of West Virginia and at Connecticut, Coach Tom Asbury wasn’t in the mood to discuss upcoming opponents and how his team would play them.

Asbury also didn’t want to dwell on past performances. His team had not played particularly well last week, either in an emotional, 73-70, loss to UC Santa Barbara or in an emotionless, 87-77, victory over outclassed Mississippi Valley State.

Instead, he preferred to talk about how Pepperdine’s tough pre-conference schedule would prepare his players for a tough campaign in the West Coast Athletic Conference.

“We can’t get too up about wins or too down about losses,” he said, just before the Waves went out on Sunday evening and defeated Northeastern, 96-91, in a bruising game in which 62 personal fouls were called at Firestone Fieldhouse in Malibu.

“We can’t worry about other teams. We’ve got to get ready for the conference.”

If playing some of the nation’s best teams is good preparation for conference action, the Waves will be combat-ready by the time they open WCAC play at home against Santa Clara on Jan. 11.

In the next three weeks, Pepperdine (6-3 as the week began) will play at Connecticut on Friday, at Nevada Las Vegas on Wednesday and entertain North Carolina on Jan. 3. Connecticut is the defending National Invitation Tournament champion, and Nevada Las Vegas and North Carolina are usually among the nation’s top 20 teams, if not the top 10 or 2. The Waves will also play host on Jan. 5 to Boise State, defending champion of the Big Sky Conference, which advanced to the second round of the NIT last season and finished with a 22-8 record.

“We really have our work cut out for us,” said Asbury, whose team’s three losses have each been by 3-point margins to UC Santa Barbara, Texas and Montana State, the last two in the University of Hawaii tournament where Pepperdine opened its season.

But he said the hard work should benefit Pepperdine. Playing before “big crowds in hostile arenas and against teams with a lot of different styles” has been and should be good for the Waves, he added.

“I think, regardless of our record, that we will go into conference play 0-0 and not be too up or too down. Our players know that they let a couple of wins slip through their hands and that we could be undefeated, but I think that’s going to benefit us.

“We just have to lower our heads and play harder every night. We have to forget about winning and losing and think about getting better as a team.”

Pepperdine has shown improvement in its first nine games, even though the Waves have had to learn a new offense and get used to having some new faces in the lineup.

When Jim Harrick was named UCLA’s coach this year and Asbury succeeded him at Pepperdine, Asbury installed a 3- and 4-man passing game in an attempt to involve the team’s big men in the offense more than they had been with Harrick’s high-post offense.

New faces include junior guard Shann Ferch, a transfer from Montana State; freshman forward Geoff Lear, who starred at Bishop Amat High School, and junior forward-center David Hairston, a transfer from Chabot Junior College.

Asbury said that he thinks his players have done a good job of learning the new offense. “Now we have to execute it like it needs to be executed, to make the extra pass in order to hit the open man. When you have a lot of guys who can shoot they tend to look for their shot rather than waiting for it to come.

“I think our players see the necessity for it (the passing game) and that our big men (senior center Casey Crawford, Lear and Hairston) have to get involved.”

Junior forward Dexter Howard, a reserve for most of his first two seasons, has certainly been involved in the offense.

In an early game, Howard tied a career high with 24 points and then surpassed that mark with games of 31, 33 and 34 points. He scored the 34 against Northeastern but had sub-par games--at least for him this year--against UC Santa Barbara (10 points) and Mississippi Valley State (15). He is averaging a team-high 20.7 points and 8.9 rebounds.

Asbury said that Howard, erratic in his first two seasons, “is responding more to coaching this year, which is a plus. He is trying to do what I want him to do. As we go along, I think he will reach a more consistent level of play.”

In the new offense, junior forward Tom Lewis, who led the team in scoring last season with a 23-point average, has had to make adjustments in his play.

Asbury said that the passing game “has been good for (Lewis) in the sense that we have asked him to be a more complete offensive player. We’ve been asking him to pass the ball more, to run the offense more, to do a lot of different things.”

Lewis has responded by averaging 19.2 points, 6.3 rebounds and 3.1 assists. He scored a season-high 27 against Northeastern and tied school records for most free throws (19) and attempts (22). Ermine Zappa was 19 of 22 against UC Santa Barbara in 1955.

Both Lewis and Howard were named WCAC players of the week this season, Lewis for his performance in his last three games.

Junior guard Craig Davis has been hampered by an ankle sprained early in the season. Last season Davis averaged 15.8 points and shot 49.3% from the field and 44.1% on 3-pointers. This year he is averaging 12.1 points and shooting a good 45.7% from 3-point territory and a not-so-good 39% on 2-pointers.

Asbury said that Davis “is just a little bit out of rhythm. When you get hurt it affects you mentally a little bit, but I think he is getting better and better, that he is starting to come around.”

Senior point guard Marty Wilson, who missed the last half of last season after he underwent knee surgery, had one of his best games against Northeastern. He made clutch plays and key baskets that kept the Waves in the game in the second half.

Asbury said that he has no worries about Wilson’s comeback from surgery. “He’s about 95% of what he was, and he is strong and an instinctive leader.” He is averaging a team-leading 4.8 assists.

Asbury did not mention Hairston, who has been a disappointment. The 6-9 junior has seen less and less playing time in the team’s first 9 games and is averaging just 1 point and less than 1 rebound in 50 minutes of play.

But he praised Lear, who is averaging 6.6 rebounds and 5.2 points in 194 minutes, and Ferch, who is averaging 12.1 points and 2.2 assists in 215 minutes.

Lear, he said, “is really going to be a force. By the time he is a junior and a senior and his skills have become refined, he is going to be a complete player.”

Asbury said Ferch will replace Wilson at point guard after the latter graduates, and he added:

“As he has gone this year, so has the team. He is a good offensive player and is scrappy in the open court. He’s exciting; he makes things happen.”