12/6/1987

Cats beat Pepperdine to climb to 5-0

Tolbert free throws in Waves’ rally, seal win

By Jay Gonzales
The Arizona Daily Star

A lazy Sunday afternoon at McKale center became a race to the finish yesterday when the University of Arizona had to hold off a rally by Pepperdine University for a 73-68 non-conference basketball victory.

After leading by as many as 14 points in the second half, the ninth-ranked Wildcats didn’t seal the win until Tom Tolbert’s two free throws gave Arizona its final victory margin with 12 seconds left. A sellout crowd of 13,216 attended.

Arizona coach lute Olson appeared grateful that the Wildcats weren’t allowed to stroll to their fifth victory against no losses. Pepperdine is 3-1.

“I could not have asked for a better situation than what we had,” Olson said. “We need games like this. At this point, we haven’t been in a situation where we’ve had to do a whole lot of that.”

The wave started to crash on Arizona when the Wildcats went to a semi-delay game with just more than four minutes left while holding a 68-59 lead. Arizona ran the 45 second clock down to two seconds when forward Sean Elliott missed a long jump shot.

Pepperdine didn’t score on its possession, and Elliott upped Arizona’s lead to 70-59 with a leaning 8 foot jump shot over Tom Lewis with 2:54 to play.

The Waves then scored the next five points, on two free throws by center Levy Middlebrooks, and a three-point play by Marty Wilson.

“We didn’t break down, and we didn’t make any turnovers,” said UA guard Steve Kerr. “We just weren’t as aggressive offensively. We started running the clock down too much, which was probably my fault.”

Anthony Cook made one of two free throws for a 71-64 lead with 1:24 to play, but Lewis converted a pair of free throws 13 seconds later to cut the margin to five.

Elliott missed on a short jump shot in the lane when he was isolated against Lewis, and Middlebrooks converted on Pepperdine’s end with a short jumper to put the waves within three, 71-68, with 26 seconds left.

After a Pepperdine timeout, Craig Davis fouled UA guard Craig McMillan, who missed the front end of a one-and-one opportunity. However Cook reached over the crowd on the rebound and tipped the ball away. It was deflected out of bounds by Pepperdine’s Donnie Moore, and Arizona took possession.

“It’s little things that beat you, like not getting rebounds off missed foul shots,” said Pepperdine Coach Jim Harrick. “I thought they were really over the back, but it’s not that we were getting any calls anyways. I thought we really needed that (rebound). It was the turning point of the game.”

Tolbert converted the free throws and a desperation three-point attempt by Casey Crawford was off just before time ran out.

“You have to give a lot of credit to Pepperdine for the job they did hanging in there,” Olson said. “They showed great poise and patience.”

Olson said he thought his team slowed down the offense too soon, but once it did, it was too late to go back to what had helped Arizona lead from the time there was 16:35 left in the first half.

“I thought that we slowed it up, spread it out too early. I thought our half-court offense had been much too effective for us to spread it,” Olson said.

“Once you spread it, it’s difficult to regain the momentum that we had. We got good shots down the stretch, but we had four (fouls) on Middlebrooks and four on Lewis, and I thought we should have kept playing longer.”

Harrick said he noticed that the Wildcats appeared to be playing not to lose during the last few minutes of the game, and it gave the waves an opportunity to fight their way back into the game.

“I thought they got cautious,” he said. “And when you put someone in a corner, they start scrapping and clawing. We were a little freer at the end.”

Cook had his second straight 12-rebound performance, and added 13 points. Tolbert tied Lewis, a transfer from the University of Southern California, for game-high scoring honors with 17 points.

“To me, (Cook) was our player of the game,” Olson said. “He’s always there. He always plays hard. We need to get that same kind of effort consistently from the other two spots up front.

“I think Sean’s is a lot better than it was, and I think Tom’s is a lot better than it was. But it’s still not where it has to be if we’re going to be a real good ball club.”