San Francisco Shocks Pepperdine

San Francisco won a critical game against the very solid third place Pepperdine Waves on Thursday in San Francisco at War Memorial Gym.

In the same vein as their win at Portland, the Dons put together a decisive win, keeping the Waves out of the kiddie pool. With this win, USF improves their conference record to 3 wins, 5 losses

Though Kruize Pinkins put the first point on the board for USF (and a free throw shot at that), the scoring combination of Kruize Pinkins, Devin Watson and Tim Derksen in the first half keep the Dons ahead of or even with Pepperdine. Watson finished the game as the Dons leading scorer with 16 points. The first half was very close between the two teams, the Dons playing with focus and determination.

Tim Derksen was terrific at the free throw line making 9 out of 10 free throws. The Dons only lost 8 points for the entire game in free throw misses which is a significant improvement from their past games. Derksen was USF’s second top scorer with 15 points in the game and he also led the team in rebounds with 8 of them.

Kruize Pinkins and Mark Tollefsen matched up well against Pepperdine on defense and were able to maintain their own productivity on offense finishing the game with 12 points and 5 rebounds (Pinkins); 11 points and 4 rebounds (Tollefsen).

Sophomore Uche Ofoegbu saw some playing time during this game coming in off the bench to lend a hand in the forward rotation. He also made his free throw shots.

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Stacy Davis did not start the first half and came in off the bench, an interesting move by Pepperdine Coach Marty Wilson. Davis did start the second half, though he was no match for a Dons team on fire. The Dons continued to put points on the board and were ahead of the Waves by 12 points at the 15:37 mark during the second half. Pepperdine never got close to USF from that point forward. Hard to believe this was the same Pepperdine team that nearly took out Gonzaga a week ago.

Davis finished the game with 23 points and 7 rebounds. Shawn Olden had 15 points and 4 rebounds while Jett Raines finished with a lowly 7 points and 2 rebounds.

USF will host Loyola Marymount on Saturday, January 24, 2015. Pepperdine will head south across the Bay Bridge (or maybe Highway 101) for their game against Santa Clara also on Saturday.