Poor Shooting Sinks Pepperdine, 53-52

Gerald Brown wanted the last shot.

Pepperdine Coach Lorenzo Romar wanted Brown to take it.

And when the ball left Brown’s hand with four seconds to play, the senior guard thought it was going in.

“My elbow was straight, my body was twisted, but when it left my hands, I thought it was good,” Brown said.

The shot missed and Pepperdine fell to BYU, 53-52, in the championship game of the Brigham Young men’s basketball tournament Saturday night.

BYU scored the winning basket on Bart Jepsen’s 14-foot jump shot with 27.4 seconds to play.

Pepperdine (5-3) scored only one basket in the final 17:06, on Brown’s shot with 2:15 to go. It gave the Waves a 52-51 edge.

“The statistic that stands out in my mind is that we shot just 20% in the second half,” Romar said. “I really can’t come up with an answer on why we shot so poorly.”

BYU (3-6) also hit a dry spell, failing to score until the 11:25 mark of the second half. Pepperdine scored only nine points during that span.

“We had an opportunity to put them away, especially in the second half,” Romar said. “Our last possession, we wanted to get the shot clock down and take a good shot. We probably let more time elapse than we wanted.”

Brown and Jelani Gardner each had 13 points for Pepperdine, and Bryan Hill and Marc McDowell each scored 10. Brown and Gardner were selected to the all-tournament team.

Mekeli Wesley, the tournament’s most valuable player, Justin Weidauer and Danny Bower each had 12 points for BYU.

Since 1996, Pepperdine has lost 14 straight times on Saturday.