BYU women’s basketball falls 64-63 in overtime to Pepperdine

In the first overtime of the season, BYU women’s basketball had the chance to bounce back after consecutive losses only to fall short and end the game in a devastating loss of 64-63 to Pepperdine.

“We got really, really complacent in parts of the game and lost our fight and that’s not anything I accept very well,” BYU head coach Amber Whiting said. “We didn’t finish it out. We didn’t close the game.”

Pepperdine outscored BYU by 11-10 to start, but that did not stop Lauren Gustin from putting on a show, leading across the board with eight points and eight rebounds in the first quarter alone.

Dominant from the start, Gustin finished the second quarter with 18 of the Cougars 24 points and BYU entered halftime with a five point advantage over the Waves.

Gustin earned her 22nd double double of the season only a minute into the third quarter but the Cougars soon hit a wall, shooting only 21% from the field.

“We kept our turnover number down but then we didn’t shoot very good,” Whiting said.

BYU managed to stay ahead but Pepperdine’s guard Ally Stedman hit a 3-pointer at the third quarter buzzer to leave the Waves trailing by one.

The Cougars pulled their lead up to 11 in a confident start to the final quarter. Nani Falatea, who had uncharacteristically remained scoreless for the first three quarters, put up seven points in two minutes.

In a 9-0 run, Pepperdine tied the game at 57 with only 26 seconds left to play.

Unable to score in the final seconds, the game went into overtime, and BYU took on the role of playing catch-up as the Waves pulled ahead. A steal from Falatea gave the Cougars the final shot of the game but a miss put an end to the Cougar comeback, allowing Pepperdine to break a four-game losing streak and take home a win.

Despite the loss, Lauren Gustin reached a career high of 30 points in a single game.

“We just need to get back to making sure that we’re playing for each other,” Coach Whiting said. “We’ve had a lot of outside noise so we need to tune that all out and just focus on each other.”

BYU stays at home to take on Loyola Marymount on Saturday, Feb. 11 at 2 p.m.