Cougar women open WCC play on the road

PROVO, Utah — BYU women’s basketball opens up the 2019-20 West Coast Conference race with two road games. The Cougars take on LMU on Saturday, Dec. 28 and Pepperdine on Saturday, Dec. 30. Both games tip at 2 p.m. PDT and a live video stream will be available on the WCC Network. 

BYU at Pepperdine Game Notes

ABOUT BYU

• The Cougars  are 5-5 on the year heading into the first week of conference play
• With 398 total wins, head coach Jeff Judkins is the all-time winningest men’s or women’s BYU basketball head coach; he needs two wins to reach 400 victories, a coaching milestone
• Paisley Johnson leads the team in scoring averaging 14.9 points per game; senior guard Brenna Chase Drollinger follows contributing 12.9 points per contest; Drollinger currently ranks 26th all-time in career points with 1,078; she tops the team in assists and in steals with 3.7 and 2.0 averages, respectively
• Sara Hamson leads the way in rebounds and blocks, pulling down 8.0 boards a game and getting 3.8 bocks a contest
• In eight of the 10 games played, BYU has had three players score in double figures, four put up double-digit points in the home win over Utah Valley on Dec. 14
• BYU leads the overall series against LMU 15-2 when playing in Los Angeles, the Cougars are 5-2, losing last year’s game there, 61-58

ABOUT LOYOLA MARYMOUNT

• LMU has compiled a 3-9 record on the season, picking up wins over Long Beach State, Cal State San Bernardino and New Mexico
• The Lions were picked to finish tied for sixth place by the coaches in the WCC 2019-20 poll while Chelsey Gipson was named to the Preseason All-WCC Team
• Four players are scoring in double figures for LMU with a team-best 10.8 points a game from Jasmine Jones; Gipson follows with 10.7 points a contest; Raychel Stanley and Ciera Ellington are each putting up 10.1 points a game
• Jones grabs a team-high 8.4 rebounds and in the assists category Gipson and Ellington tie dishing out 2.8 assists per game
• The Lions finished last season with an 18-15, 10-8 record, tied for fifth place in the league race and played in the first round of the postseason WNIT
• Head coach Charity Elliott is in her seventh season at LMU  where she has compiled a 95-134 record

ABOUT PEPPERDINE

• The Waves finished their nonconference portion of their schedule with a 6-4 record, recording wins over Cal Poly, New Mexico State, Concordia, Cal State LA, Eastern Washington and UC Davis
• Paige Fecske tops the leaderboard in scoring with a 12.4 average; teammate Malia Bambrick joins Fecske in scoring with a 10.8 average
• In the rebounding category, Pepperdine has two players who are pulling down the most rebounds, Monique Andriuolo and Barbara Sitanggan average 6.0 boards a game; Sitanggan also dishes out the most assists with a 4.1 average and gets the most steals with a 2.1 average
• Pepperdine was picked to finish tied for sixth place with LMU in this year’s race as voted on by the league’s head coaches last October
• BYU leads the series over Pepperdine 19-3; when the Cougars play in Malibu, they have a 6-3 mark; last year each team won on its home court; these two teams played each other a third time, in the semifinals of last year’s WCC Championships in Las Vegas with BYU securing a 68-63 victory

UP NEXT
After the two league road games, the Cougars continue WCC play at home with three straight games played in the Marriott Center. No. 17 Gonzaga comes to Provo, on Thursday, Jan. 2, at 7 p.m. MDT. BYU then hosts Portland on Saturday, Jan. 4 at 2 p.m. MDT. Both games will be carried live on BYUtv and on the BYUtv App.