SoCal WCC Weekly Recap (11/17)

With most fall sports now in the midst of their postseasons and the winter sports officially underway, it is a busy time in college athletics.  The WCC features a number of teams with solid shots at national championships this fall, with San Diego’s women’s volleyball and soccer, and both Pepperdine’s and LMU’s men’s water polo leading the charge into the playoffs.

Pepperdine Waves

Pepperdine’smen’s basketball program is looking to rebound from some tough recent seasons andopened their 08-09 campaign with a 91-82 win over CS Monterey Bay on Thursday.  On Saturday, they couldn’t quite hold off Arkasas-Little Rock and took a tough 66-65 loss.  The women’s basketball also jumped out to a 1-0 record after a win over Cal Poly SLO 79-72.

Both the men’s and women’s corss country teams finished their seasons by sending their top seven to the Regional Championships at Stanford over the weekend and the men finished 24th, while the women came in at 22nd.

The #24 women’s volleyball team has fallen on hard times in WCC play.  The Waves were 12-0 in the preseason, but have gone just 7-5 in conference play, dropping them to the brink of missing the playoffs.  They did have a very successful weekend in the Pacific Northwest against the bottom feeders in the WCC (Gonzaga and Portland, combined 3-23 in WCC play), sweeping both.

The #5 Waves men’s water polo team held off UC Santa Barbara 10-9 and will play #2 UCLA this week to close their regular season before beginning their conference tournament and then on to the NCAAs.

San Diego Toreros

The USD men’s basketball team must have felt a little slighted that they only received one Top 25 vote in the AP rankings after the way they closed their 07-08 season.  The Toreros knocked off two Top 25 teams (St. Mary’s and Gonzaga) to win the WCC tournament and advance to the NCAA tourney, where they knocked of UConn, picked by many to win the whole tourney!  The team returned every player from that fantastic season, but their experience wasn’t enough to shake off the rust in their first game of the season, where they fell to UNLV 65-60.

The women’s basketball team also made the NCAA Tournament last year, but they were able to win their opener this season, crushing cross-town rival UC San Diego 66-51.  The good times came to an end just two days later when the Toreros fell at UC Santa Barbara 75-66 despite 31 points from Amber Sprague.

While the men’s cross country team did not send a full squad to the NCAA Regional meet at Stanford, senior Chris Jacobs did make a solid showing for the team, breaking the school 10K record with a time of 31:25.  The women’s team did send a full seven and placed 25th in the meet, coming in ahead of rival San Diego State.

The football team beat up the Butler Bulldogs in their final Pioneer league game of the season, 34-17.  The Toreros finished 6-2 in league, good for a disappointing third behind Jacksonville and Dayton, both of whom beat USD.  Those two will square off this week with the league title on the line as both are 6-1 in league.  USD will host UC Davis in a budding rivalry game.  Davis has won the last two contests against the Toreros; both games were spectacular shootouts.

The #17 women’s soccer team won their first round NCAA Tournament game 1-0 over #27 Long Beach State with the game’s lone goal scored in the 85thminute!  They were set to play top seeded, host UCLA in the second roundon Sunday but the game was postponed due to bad air quality because of the wildfires.  The game will be made up on Monday, with the other seven quarterfinalistswaiting for a winner.  The men completed their season with a 2-1 loss to San Francisco (who won the league), andthen a 1-1 tie with Santa Clara.  The Toreros finished 6-10-4 over all, and 6-5-1 in WCC play.

The #13 women’s volleyball team saw their seven-match win streak snapped when they lost 3-1 to #29 St. Mary’s, but the Toreros quickly recovered and knocked off #19 Santa Clara in a sweep two days later!  The Toreros are shoe-ins for the NCAA Tournament, which will begin in December.  USD has three matches remaining, including at LMU and #24 Pepperdine this week.

Loyola Marymount Lions

LMU’smen’s basketball team had a tough opening weekend at the World Vision Classic Iowa State.  The Lions lost to Milwaukee (75-51), host Iowa State (67-55) and UC Davis (64-55).  The women fared better at the Bank of Hawaii Invitational in Hilo, Hawai’i.  They beat Hawai’i 63-47, lost in triple overtime to Arizona (93-80) and came back to beat Toledo 81-74.  They are now 3-1 on the season.

The cross country teams had exceptional showings at the NCAA West Regionals.  After close seconds at the WCC finals two weeks ago, the men’s and women’s teams sent full squads to Stanford and finished 17th and 16th respectively.

Closing out a tough season that saw them finish 6th in the WCC, the men’s soccer team knocked off bottom feeding Santa Clara 3-0 on Friday and then rose up to upset the WCC champs San Francisco 5-4 on Senior Day on Sunday to end the season.

The #6 men’s water polo team was awarded a 1-seed in their upcoming Western Water Polo Association tournament despite losing the final game of their regular season 10-9 to #10 Long Beach State.  The loss snapped a 6-game win streak and the Lions finished the season 17-9.

After losing their sixth consecutive match in WCC play on Thursday (3-2 at Gonzaga), the women’s volleyball team rebounded Saturday to dig out of a 1-0 deficit to win 3-1 at Portland.