Pepperdine Hunts Conference Crown : College basketball: The Waves, red hot over the last few games, will face St. Mary’s in the West Coast Conference opener.

When Pepperdine’s basketball team was struggling midway through the season, Coach Tom Asbury said that the West Coast Conference tournament was good because it gives every team a chance for redemption.

The Waves, who came in second in the conference to nationally ranked Loyola Marymount, don’t need to redeem themselves any longer.

Pepperdine has won three straight games and nine of its last 11, including an upset victory over nationally ranked WCC champion Loyola Marymount. The Waves finished the regular season at 16-11 overall and 10-4 in conference play.

Each of the teams that Pepperdine will or may face in the first two rounds of the WCC tournament has a great need for vindication, however, and each has nothing to lose.

Pepperdine will meet St. Mary’s (7-19, 4-10) in the first round at 6 p.m. Saturday at Loyola’s Gersten Pavilion. If the Waves win, they will play the winner of Saturday night’s first-round game between the University of San Francisco (8-19, 4-10) and the University of San Diego (14-12 as the week began, 9-5) in a semifinal game at 7 p.m. Sunday.

St. Mary’s, USF and San Diego have each lost twice to Pepperdine in conference play this season, and each has something to prove against the Waves.

Pepperdine Coach Tom Asbury said that it is difficult to beat a team three times in one season and that his players can’t afford to take its first- or second-round opponents lightly.

“It’s tough playing anybody three times, especially anybody that you have beaten,” Asbury said. “That’s not always a good situation, but it’s better than putting your bags away. “Anything can happen in a tournament. I don’t think our guys can look past anybody.”

He remembers when the sneaker was on the other foot.

In 1987 Pepperdine finished seventh in the conference but upset both second-place Gonzaga and regular-season champion USD in the first two rounds of the tournament. The Waves lost in the tournament final to Santa Clara, which finished fifth in the WCC in the regular season.

Pepperdine ended 1987 with only a 12-18 overall record, but it also finished with a bang-bang in the tournament before losing the championship game.

Underdog teams in conference tournaments, Asbury said, are “like 0-0 and as loose as they can be--and they can be dangerous.”

St. Mary’s doesn’t appear dangerous.

Coach Paul Landreaux’s Gaels have lost eight of their last nine games, have used 13 different starting line-ups this season and have played only four games with a full roster because of injuries and illnesses.

St. Mary’s will probably be without its leading scorer, senior forward James Dailey, who has missed the last seven games with a back injury.

One starter, senior guard-forward Terry Burns, missed 14 games because of a ruptured disc in his back. Burns has returned, but he is still not considered completely healthy.

Eric Bamberger, a 6-10 sophomore center, has returned to the starting lineup after missing four games because of mononucleosis.

Landreaux expects to use two of three freshmen at the forward positions. John Levitt, a 6-foot-5 native of Juneau, Alaska, will start at one forward spot, and either 6-7 Ted Bull or 6-7 Demetreus Robbins at the other.

The other starter will be senior point guard Mike Vontoure, the team’s second-leading scorer after Dailey, who was averaging 12.6 points a game. Vontoure is averaging 12.4 points and Bamberger is at 12.3.

The Gaels have been deeply wounded, but remember that old saw about wounded animals being the most dangerous of all.

Vontoure is a good shooter from three-point range, and Levitt isn’t bad. Through 23 games, Levitt was leading all conference freshmen in scoring with an average of 8.3 points.

In his first game since his illness, Bamberger scored 23 points and had 11 rebounds in last week’s 83-80 upset over Portland in overtime. In last Saturday’s 75-62 loss to Gonzaga, Bamberger scored 18 points, all in the first half, before he tired and ran into foul trouble.

Landreaux, the former El Camino College head coach and UCLA assistant, said that the Gaels “are a lot better team with Bamberger in the middle than with (6-8 freshman) Danny White.”

He also saw a ray of hope in the tournament’s final seedings. “We might match up a little bit better against Pepperdine than against San Diego,” he said.

Upsets are always possible, but the Waves have been playing very well lately and appear to be much too strong for St. Mary’s.

Wave senior forward Dexter Howard, used mostly to provide spark off the bench this season, has been almost unstoppable as a starter in the last six games. In that stretch, he has averaged 26 points, including a career-high 35 points in the 131-123 upset of Loyola. He leads the Waves with a 17.6-point average.

The other Wave starters have also been scoring in double figures and have also played well lately.

Senior forward Tom Lewis and senior guard Craig Davis are each averaging about 14.5 points a game, sophomore center Geoff Lear is averaging 13.7 points and a team-high 8.9 rebounds and senior guard Shann Ferch is averaging 10.8 points. Davis leads the team with a 47.2% average on three-point shots, and Ferch is shooting 44.1% on triples.

The Waves may also have too much firepower for San Diego, if the Toreros get past USF.

San Diego was trailing Pepperdine, 57-43, at halftime last Saturday, a half in which the Waves made 10 of 13 three-pointers (76.9%) and shot 61.3% from the field.

But the Toreros, led by the inside scoring of forward John Jerome and the outside scoring of guard Pat Holbert, didn’t quit, cutting the lead to three points three times in the second half.

Holbert finished with a team-high 27 points and Jerome added 23 points, but the Waves won, 102-89.

A rematch between Pepperdine and USD in the tournament would probably be much closer.

If form holds, Pepperdine and Loyola will meet in the title game, but could the Waves play with as much emotion on the Lions’ home court as they did when they beat the Lions at Firestone Fieldhouse?

Asbury thinks so. He said that he wishes that the tournament championship game could be played “other than on their floor.” But he added:

“I think the emotion is something we can recapture, especially when the NCAA tournament is at the end of the tunnel. There is certainly a lot at stake, certainly enough for us to get emotional.”

If Loyola should run to form and beat the Waves in the final, Asbury said he thinks his team still would merit consideration for the National Invitation Tournament. Pepperdine has gone to the NIT for the last two years.

“If we lost in the (tournament) final, we would be 18-12, and last year (after the conference tournament) we were 19-12,” he said. “I’d say we would have to be looked at pretty closely (by the NIT), especially finishing as strongly as we did.”