San Diego Toreros (8-5) Open WCC Play On Road At Pepperdine
Put 5-Game Winning Streak On The Line
GAMES #14 & #15: The USD Toreros (8-5), winners of five straight, open up West Coast Conference play this week on the road at Pepperdine (Fri., Jan. 7th, 7:00 p.m.) and at Loyola Marymount (Sun., Jan. 9th, 1:00 p.m.). The LMU Lions will take on San Francisco on Friday before hosting the Toreros Sunday afternoon.
SERIES RECORDS: This is the 71st meeting between Pepperdine and San Diego and the Waves have pretty much dominated this series, 51-19 (40-13 WCC) ... Pepperdine has won three straight and 7-of-8 ... last season Pepperdine won 88-79 in San Diego and 91-73 in Malibu. Since 1994-95, coach Brad Holland is 8-13 against Pepperdine. Sunday's contest will be the 58th meeting between USD and LMU ... against the Lions, the Toreros lead the WCC series 29-22, but LMU leads the overall series, 35-32 ... LMUsnapped a 5-game Torero winning streak by sweeping last year's games, 76-68 in San Diego and 66-64 in Los Angeles. Since 1994-95, coach Holland is 13-8 versus the Lions.
TOREROS DOWN CREIGHTON FOR 5TH STRAIGHT WIN: Sophomore guard Avi Fogel led the USD men's basketball to to its 5th straight victory, and 6th in its last 7 games, with a career-high 22 points as USD downed the Creighton Bluejays 82-70 on New Year's Eve. With the win the Toreros closed out their nonconference schedule at 8-5. Brice Vounang (14 points/8 rebounds) led four other Toreros in double digits as the 5-game winning streak is the program's longest since a 6-game streak in 2000-01. Creighton falls to 9-4 on the season. The Toreros played superb defense and rebounded well, but more importantly, handled Creighton's fullcourt press. Fogel played a key role in that department using his quickness to break through on numerous occasions. "We had two keys for today's game, continue our solid defense and rebounding, and secondly, handle their fullcourt press and get into our offense," said 11th-year head coach Brad Holland. "We trained hard to go 40 minutes of full court pressure, and it paid off for us. Avi is a press breaker, he played a great floor game. In the first half both teams struggled in getting out of the gates offensively as the score was 13-12 Creighton at the 9:14 mark. It was still close with just under 5 minutes to go (22-21 USD), but the Toreros closed out the 1st half on a 14-5 run with five different players scoring. USD's defense held Creighton to 36% shooting in the first half (9-25) while converting 51.9% of their own (14-27). In the 2nd half USD immediately jumped out to a 16 point lead (44-28) at the 17:32 mark on a jumper by Vounang, and then was able to answer all of the Jays' runs the rest of the way. CU cut it to 9 at 55-46 with 10:56 to go on a Nate Funk jumper, but Ross DeRogatis immediately answered with a trey. They cut it to 9 one more time, but Vounang converted a jumper. From there USD would hold a double-digit lead the rest of the way. Besides Fogel and Vounang, USD also got double-digit scoring from Nick Lewis (12 points), Ross DeRogatis (11) and Brandon Gay (10). Junior Corey Belser tied a USD single game mark with 7 steals to go with 9 points, 6 rebounds and 3 assists. USD outrebounded the Jays 37-34 and turned the ball over just 13 times despite receiving heavy full court pressure most of the contest. Creighton (9-4) was paced by Nate Funk with 17 points. Added coach Holland, "We couldn't feel better about ourselves heading into WCC play. We've won five in a row and six of seven. Our guys are playing with a lot of confidence and believe they are going to win every game they play."
TOREROS ON THE ROAD: USD is 2-4 in games played away from the JCP this season, but have won 2-of-3 ... USD's first road win came at San Jose State (Dec. 12th) with a 74-60 win ... they showed that wasn't a fluke with an impressive 95-88 win at Wyoming on Dec. 28th ... prior to USD's win over the Cowboys, Wyoming in "The Dome of Doom" was 246-74 all-time (76.9%), and even better was 6th year head coach Steve McClain at 74-14 (84.1%) ... on the road this season the Toreros average 76.5 ppg and 32.3 rpg while giving up 81.7 ppg and 37.0 rpg ... senior Brice Vounang is averaging 21.5 ppg and 7.3 rpg in away games, followed by Brandon Gay (11.5 ppg) and Nick Lewis (10.0 ppg).
SCOUTING THE PEPPERDINE WAVES: Pepperdine enters WCC play with a record of 10-5 and riding a two-game winning streak ... they beat Mississippi Valley State (74-62) on Dec. 29th and Colorado State (78-63) on January 3rd ... after opening the season with an 80-58 loss to East Carolina, the Waves strung together 7 straight wins, including a 75-61 win over then top-20 Wisconsin ... in their recent home win over Colorado State, 6-9 senior forward Glen McGowan had a monster game finishing with 31 points and 22 rebounds ... he also had a double-double in win over Mississippi Valley State (16-11) ... McGowan ranks second in the WCC in both scoring (20.6 ppg) and rebounding (8.7) ... he is followed by 6-5 junior guard Alex Acker (15.1 ppg/7.5 rpg) and 6-7 senior forward Yakhouba Diawara (14.2 ppg/5.6 rpg) ... head coach Paul Westphal (4th year) was 15-16 last year and finished 9-5 in the WCC race ... this year Pepperdine is a perfect 5-0 at home.
