Waves Roll On by Beating USD : College basketball: Pepperdine wins 13th in a row, 75-69. Toreros go into postseason with a four-game losing streak.

With the nation’s second longest winning streak on the line--in this case, the free-throw line--Pepperdine University’s smallest player, Damin Lopez, made two of two with 24 seconds left Saturday to secure a 75-69 West Coast Conference victory over the University of San Diego.

Paybacks can be painful. That’s precisely the way USD wrapped up a 91-88 victory over the Waves on Jan. 11. Geoff Probst, USD’s shortest player, iced that one with his first free throw of the season.

“They were about the same,” Pepperdine Coach Tom Asbury said of the two games, “except Lopez is about a 90% free-throw shooter, and that was Probst’s first of the year.”

That earlier loss was Pepperdine’s last. Since then, the Waves rolled through every WCC opponent for 13 victories in a row. Only Nevada Las Vegas, with 36, has a longer success streak among Division I schools.

Geoff Lear had 18 points and seven rebounds, and Doug Christie 17 points and seven assists to lead the Waves.

Kelvin Woods, a 6-foot-5 junior forward, scored 17 to move into 20th place on the all-time Torero scoring list. His 787 is one more than Bob Maines scored from 1957-60.

Neither team led in the game by more than six points, and Pepperdine held a 67-65 edge with less than three minutes left. Christie then made a six-foot hook shot with 2:22 left and Lear a five-foot baseline jumper with 1:41 left to make it 71-65.

USD’s Anthony Thomas (12 points) then made a layup, and after Rex Manu made one of two free throws, Thomas buried a 12-footer from the baseline with 27 seconds left to make it 72-69.

After a horrendous first-half shooting the ball, USD had settled down and was looking to come back with a three-pointer. Wayman Strickland, the WCC’s most accurate three-point shooter this season, hoped for a shot, and so did Pat Holbert, who made a buzzer-beating three last Saturday against St. Mary’s to send that game into overtime.

Those opportunities never came, though, as Lopez convincingly swished both his foul shots.

Pepperdine had clinched its sixth WCC regular-season title in 11 years last Saturday, but it was Asbury’s first in three years.

The Waves celebrated after the USD victory by throwing Asbury first into the shower and then into the swimming pool outside the USD Sports Center.

“You almost think we did something tonight,” a smiling Asbury said.

They did, beating USD for the sixth time in the last seven meetings.

“That was a nice win, a real nice win,” Asbury relented. “It could have been easy for our guys to say ‘Hey, we clinched it!’ But we didn’t do that.”

A third meeting between these schools is possible in the upcoming WCC Tournament. Pepperdine (19-8, 13-1) is the No. 1-seeded team and has opted to play the 6 p.m. game in Saturday’s opener against Portland.

USD, which has lost four in row and has fallen to 16-11, 8-6, dropped into third place in the WCC. Loyola Marymount, which has won 10 in a row, defeated Santa Clara, 104-95, to overtake the Toreros, who will play Gonzaga.

“We’ll be back. I guarantee it,” USD Coach Hank Egan said. “This team has competed in almost every ballgame this season. We haven’t always gotten it done. But we’ve been there.

“We don’t hang our heads. We don’t cave in to the situation.”

Said Woods, “We’re not done yet. We all realize that. We know how to win. We’ve struggled before, but we’ve bounced back. Eventually we’ll have to come out on top. We’re playing too well.”