Every team in the WCC, except UoP, won their respective openers last night.
And to be fair to Pacific, they played on the road at Stanford and only lost by 10 points. The Tigers actually WON the second half.
Good start for the WCC!
6 Likes
BYU came close to an awful upset loss but pulled it out in the final seconds. Pepperdine’s superstar sophomores, Lewis, Mitchell, and Malette, went bonkers for a combined 65 points in a 49 point drubbing of Rice. Pepperdine has big time talent that could, if combined with even serviceable defense, realize big time results. Alas, that defense has never shown up under Romar.
WCC fared better than our Pac-12 friends, with Cal taking a loss to UC Davis and USC getting dropped badly by Enfield’s former squad at Florida Gulf Coast. ASU needed some last second heroics to get past Tarleton State. And Oregon State (okay, I know) almost got taken down by Tulsa.
Yeah, I saw that eye-popping Pepp score. Romar could try a Westhead strategy of making the offense their best defense.
We will learn a lot about Gonzaga in their next three… not that any results would tempt me to predict anything other than tying for first, at worst, in the WCC.
There are a few truisms in WCC predictions but in my experience, someone always projects Pepp/LMU/USD to finally break out of the mire and it never seems to happen, least of all to Pepp. But who knows.
Agree on GU…I’ve watched their exhibition and half of their game yesterday. They don’t look like the #2 team in the country at this point. The overall talent level is fine but they are a bit of rudderless ship with an inexperienced 2nd year point guard, Nolan Hickman. He’s an OK talent but a big drop off from their typical pt guards: Nembhard, Suggs, Josh Perkins, Williams-Goss just to name recent guys.
Timme will dominate the WCC again but he can only carry them so far…as we’ve seen w/ Baylor in the 2021 championship and other big/athletic teams, he can be neutralized against certain matchups and he won’t have a tall sidekick in Holmgren to take some pressure off him in post. I have no doubt GU will win the WCC again but not convinced they’re destined for a Final 4 with this group.
1 Like