Box Score
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -- USF was good enough when it needed to be and as a result, the Dons defeated Pepperdine, 64-58 in a see-saw affair Saturday night in Memorial Gymnasium.
Redshirt freshman
Mark Tollefsen scored a team-high 18 points while
Cody Doolin added 13 and
Cole Dickerson 11 to lead USF (13-15, 6-9 WCC) to its second straight victory and sixth win in its last 10 outings.
Pepperdine (12-15, 4-10 WCC) was led in scoring by Nikolas Skouen who finished with 19 points.
USF trailed by nine points at 48-39 with 10:18 left and were still down by five at 51-46 with 6:35 remainining in the game but three-pointers by Tollefsen and Tim Derksen fueled a 14-2 run that gave the Dons a 60-53 lead with 2:50 left.
Pepperdine eventually cut the lead to two at 60-58 on a pair of Skouen free throws at the 1:10 mark, but Tollefsen answerd with a pair of free throws of his own after he was fouled on a rebound off a Derksen miss and the Dons lead was 62-58 with 26 seconds remaining.
On the Waves next possession, Derksen was fouled after rebounding a Lorne Jackson missed and made one of two free throws that gave USF a 63-58 lead.
Dickerson's free throw with 0.05 remaining accounted for the final score of 64-58.
The Dons shot just 39.6 percent from the floor and the WCC's top three-point shooting team was just 6-for-19 from beyond the arc, quite a contrast to the first meeting with the Waves in Malibu, when the Dons buried 14 threes in a 86-78 victory.
However, USF made 7 of its last 14 shots from the floor, including three treys, over the last 10:53 of the game to sweep the Waves for the first time since the 2007-08 season.
"I'm proud of our guys the way they were able to fight back," said USF head coach
Rex Walters. "It's nice when you get a "W" even if you don't play particularly well.
"We got stops and big rebounds down the stretch when we needed to."
"I thought Tim Derksen was fantastic with his nose for the basketball, toughness and defense but there is no way we win this game without
Mark Tollefsen. It was his best day as a Don so far and I think he has even bigger and better days ahead of him.
"It was a team win - a lot of guys made plays."
"Avry Holmes and De'End did a greay job on Lorne Jackson. He's a big, physical fifth-year guard that can score in a lot of different ways and Tim Derksen did a nice job on Jordan Baker. When you hold a team to 37 percent shooting, you have a chance to win games."
USF will return to action next Thursday when they face the San Diego Toreros in Jenny Craig Pavilion beginning at 7:00 p.m.
Dons Notes
Avry Holmes made his first career start tonight in place of
Chris Adams, who missed the game for medical reasons...there were five lead changes in the game...USF trailed by as many as 11 points in the first half but led by two at the break, 27-25.
