South Florida Finds Spark, Rallies to Defeat Pepperdine
Pepperdine couldn’t have asked for a better set-up Tuesday night before 685 at Firestone Fieldhouse.
With about one minute remaining in the first half, the Waves had an eight-point lead against South Florida, which lost all 14 road games last season.
Adding to South Florida’s misery was an ankle sprain suffered in the first half by its second-leading scorer, Jesse Salters.
But that’s when the Bears’ Chucky Atkins took over.
The junior point guard scored 20 of his game-high 23 points in the final 21 minutes to lead South Florida to a 73-60 nonconference victory over Pepperdine.
Atkins, the Bulls’ leading scorer this season at 20.5 points per game, scored 10 points in a row to lead the comeback. His steal and layup with 18:43 remaining gave South Florida (6-2) a 35-33 lead that it never relinquished.
“I knew when Jesse went down that I’d have to step it up a little,” said Atkins, who made five of eight three-point shots and had six assists and two steals.
“I’m one of the leaders on this team, so I knew I’d have to pick up some of the scoring slack.”
“Chucky’s a fine player,” said South Florida Coach Bobby Paschal, whose team is enjoying the road so far this year with three victories in four tries. “We expect that from him. He’s a leader.
“We had a lot of guys pick up the slack for Salters.”
South Florida made nine of its 14 three-point shots and shot 56.8% for the game.
Pepperdine shot only 38.6%, while making four of 19 three-point shots.
“We did a lot to beat ourselves tonight,” said Pepperdine first-year Coach Tony Fuller after the Waves dropped to 2-6. “We knew they didn’t have a whole lot of outside shooters so we tried to take away their inside game.
“As the game went on, they found their rhythm and we lost ours.”
Pepperdine closed to within 49-48 on two free throws by Khary Hervey with 8:52 remaining.
But the Bulls, led by Atkins’ five points and two assists, went on a 13-3 run to take a 62-52 lead with 2:03 left.
Gerald Brown led the Waves with 14 points. Josh Merrill had 12 and Gavin Vanderputten 10.