Waves to Open Title Defense Against Lions : Basketball: Pepperdine, which has lost five of its past eight games, will need to be more consistent if it hopes to repeat as West Coast Conference champion.

If basketball teams get any positive or negative impetus from a preceding game, Pepperdine should handily win its West Coast Conference opener with Loyola Marymount.

The Waves (7-5), last season’s regular season and WCC tournament champions, will play host to the Lions (7-5) at 7:35 p.m. Saturday at Firestone Fieldhouse.

Pepperdine is coming off a 79-73 overtime loss at No. 4 Kansas, a game in which the underdog Waves led for more than 32 minutes.

Loyola was routed by DePaul, 125-93, on Sunday at Rosemont, Ill. The Lions had 16 first-half turnovers and Loyola Coach Jay Hillock said that his team’s two main deficiencies were “our inability to rebound and our inability to take care of the ball.”

In eight victories before meeting Pepperdine, Kansas’ average margin of victory was 29 points, including a 104-75 defeat of DePaul.

The Waves have yet to play with the consistency needed to repeat as conference champion. Before playing Kansas, Pepperdine lost, 76-72, in overtime to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, an NCAA Division II team. Pepperdine Coach Tom Asbury said afterward that he was concerned, but he added, “This is basically the same team that won the regular-season conference championship by four games last season.”

But it is also the same team that has lost five of its past eight games.

It took a while for guard Doug Christie, the conference’s most valuable player last season, to shake off the effects of surgery for torn cartilage in his right knee, but he now appears back to normal. He is averaging 17.8 points and 5.3 assists to lead the Waves. Last season he averaged 19.1 points and 4.8 assists.

Forward Dana Jones, the WCC freshman of the year in 1990-91, is averaging 12.2 points, seven rebounds and 1.4 steals, not much different from last season when he averaged 10 points, 8.2 rebounds and 1.5 steals.

Damin Lopez, a reserve point guard last season, has moved ahead of Rich Welch, who played only 13 seconds against Kansas. He is shooting 42.1% from three-point range, not much higher than Welch’s 41.4%, but he appears to be doing a better job of handling the ball and running the offense.

Other Waves, including last season’s starting center, Derek Noether, have been inconsistent.

Forward Geoff Lear, twice an All-WCC selection, averaged 18.5 points and 9.8 rebounds last season. This season he is averaging only 14.7 points and 6.2 rebounds. However, he is averaging nearly the same number of blocks this season (1.8) as last (1.9).

Lear has scored season highs of 24 points in a triple-overtime loss to Montana and a victory over Lafayette. He had 14 points, seven rebounds and three blocked shots against Kansas and made a couple of baskets over 7-foot-2, 270-pound freshman center Greg Ostertag.

But his rebounding has been disappointing. His season high was 10 in a 98-58 loss at UCLA.

Lear is aware that the Waves have not played to expectations. He said the team’s strong effort against Kansas could serve as “our wake-up call and kind of turn us around.”

Loyola has several players returning from a squad that finished second, four games behind Pepperdine, in WCC play last season.

They still have guard Terrell Lowery, who led the conference in scoring with a 28.5-point average and is leading it again with a 26.5-point average.

They also have added point guard Tony Walker, who sat out last season because of a wrist injury. Walker is averaging 7.5 assists, second in the conference behind Orlando Smart of San Francisco, who is averaging 8.7.

Walker, who leads the WCC in field-goal accuracy at 60.3%, is taking some of the pressure off Lowery. Without Walker, Lowery had to be the team’s off-guard and point guard.

But the Lions did lose all-conference center Richard Petruska, who transferred to UCLA and is redshirting this season.

Petruska averaged 16.4 points, 7.6 rebounds and nearly two blocked shots. This season, the points, rebounds and blocks are spread among Loyola’s big men.

Forward Brian McCloskey is averaging 11.9 points, 6.6 rebounds and has two blocks in 11 games, forward Chris Knight is averaging 7.9 points, 5.5 rebounds and 1.1 blocks, and center Christian Scott is averaging nine points and 5.9 rebounds and has nine blocks in 12 games.

Hillock, in his second season as coach, said that “one thing we miss about Petruska is his bulk. It’s hard to replace 250 pounds.” He said that McCloskey has been playing on a turned ankle in which tendinitis developed.

Although Lowery is almost as productive a scorer as last season, he has not been as accurate. Last season he shot 49% from the field and 40% from three-point range; this season he is shooting only 42.5% from the field and 34.7% from three-point range.

Hillock said Lowery “has been scoring points, but he has not shot the ball well. But I expect him to break out of that at any time.”

Last season Loyola’s Ross Richardson ranked first in the NCAA among freshman in three-point accuracy at 52.6%. This season he is shooting only 30.2% from three-point range.

Asbury said that the Lions may be “a little bit up and down, but so are we. They’re always very dangerous when they play on the emotional level of a Loyola-Pepperdine game.

“I’m sure that they’ll come over and play well. They’ve got enough guys from the glory days (of 1988-89 and 1989-90) who know what’s it’s like to be a great basketball team.

“I hope we’re ready to step in and start playing at a consistent level. We haven’t done that, and I hope we get ready and play every single night.”

Hillock said the Lions have not played well since the Christmas break, but said Loyola will be ready for Pepperdine.

“They have three top-notch players--Doug Christie, Dana Jones and Geoff Lear--and any one of them can carry it,” Hillock said. “I think the Kansas game probably did a lot for (Pepperdine).”