LOS ANGELES – The final week of the conference season has arrived and LMU is prepared to play a meaningful Thursday night game at Pepperdine. The Lions (11-7, 6-4 WCC) and the Waves (10-10, 6-5) are two of the four teams above .500 in WCC play and will play the only leg PCH Cup at 6:00 P.M. in Malibu.
LMU is looking at securing a winning record in conference play for the first time since 2011-12, when the Lions went 11-5 in league and earned an invitation to the CollegeInsiders.com Postseason Tournament. That was also the last LMU team to finish the regular season in fourth or better entering the WCC Championships.
Despite a number of injuries and COVID pauses to date, first year Head Coach
Stan Johnson has the team positioned to close out the year above the seventh-place finish picked in the WCC Preseason Poll back in October. This year's tournament will be based on the league's adoption of a KenPom statistical ranking system, which LMU hopes to benefit from in this final week with road games at Pepperdine and top-ranked Gonzaga.
The Lions are playing without
Dameane Douglas and
Quentin Jackson, Jr. for the remainder of the season, and have been without
Joe Quintana since the end of the game at Santa Clara.
With the injuries, others have needed to step up, and that has started with senior
Eli Scott. The reigning WCC Player of the Week leads the league in scoring in conference games at 21.0 points per game and is second in rebounding in league games at 7.40 boards per game. Scott is also fourth in field goal percentage (51 percent) and eighth in assists (4.00 per game) since WCC action began. Scott also grabs a league-best 2.40 offensive rebounds per game in conference games.
The game will air on Stadium from Firestone Fieldhouse and feature Anne Marie Anderson and Wyking Jones. A member of LMU's 1,000+ point club, Jones was an All-Conference standout for the Lions in his time on the Bluff, from 1991-95.
As always, the game will be available to the radio audience on KXLU 88.9 FM.
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