Yoeli Childs leads way as BYU tops Pepperdine, earns No. 2 seed in WCC tourney

No. 17 BYU went to Malibu expecting a battle against Pepperdine in Saturday’s regular season finale, but Yoeli Childs took it upon himself to make sure the Cougars still came out on top.

The senior scored a career high 38 points on 63% shooting from the field to lead BYU to an 81-64 win over the Waves.

BYU spoiled Pepperdine’s senior night festivities as the Cougars rolled into their ninth straight win and improved to 24-7 overall, 13-3 in league play. With the win, BYU locked up the No. 2 seed at the West Coast Conference tournament and earned a triple-bye into the semifinals.

Prior to Saturday’s game, BYU had split its games (5-5) at Firestone Fieldhouse since joining the WCC. Before leaving for the game, coach Mark Pope acknowledged that BYU has found it difficult to play there – and this game proved no different.

Pepperdine set the pace in the first half, getting on the board first and immediately recovering from a 13-2 BYU run with a 6-0 run of their own.

While BYU did a good job of defending Pepperdine’s leading scorer, Colbey Ross, in the first half, allowing only three points on 1-of-6 shooting from the field, it left Kessler Edwards open to lead the charge. Edwards dropped in 18 points in the first half.

Meanwhile, the Waves knew they had to keep the top 3-point shooting team in the nation away from shooting the long shots, and succeeded. The Cougars went 3 of 8 from beyond the arc in the first half.

Pepperdine’s Skylar Chavez scored nine straight points for the Waves on three 3-pointers to try to keep Pepperdine in the race, but then Zac Seljaas came in to disrupt the Waves and responded to each shot from Chavez with his own, scoring 10 points in a row.

This story will be updated.



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