WCC Basketball: 2021-22 power rankings heading into Christmas break

8. Pepperdine (5-8)

Last week: Defeated Southeast Missouri 83-77

This week: at Oregon, Westmont

After a brutal couple of weeks, the Waves look to be trending towards the right direction winning their last three games. Freshman Mike Mitchell has been phenomenal at distributing the ball, averaging 5.1 assists per game. Junior Jan Zideck has been a solid scorer for head coach Lorenzo Romar. He shot 40% from outside in their three-game winning streak.

7. Loyola Marymount (6-5)

-1 spot
Last week: Lost to Nevada 68-63

This week: Bellarmine

I was raised well enough to admit when I was wrong and boy, oh boy, was I wrong. I bought in heavily on the Lions as the dark horse team to earn a third tournament bid for the conference and to potentially make noise in its first week. Well, that’s not happening. At 6-5, the SMU win last month is the lone top 100 win this year.

They had their second chance on Saturday night against Nevada but crumbled late at the end of the game. In a tight, 2 point deficit, Eli Scott was called for a technical for jawing with a Wolfpack opponent which pushed the Lions further away from evening the score. The path for the Lions went from treacherous to closed off over the weekend, now with the WCC tournament being the only viable play-in opportunity.

And with Scott—the team’s best player leading in points, rebounds, and assists–also accounting for 4.4 of the 16.2 turnovers per game, it’s hard to envision how the ship gets righted. They should be a scary team for the top half of the conference, but betting on consistency from this team feels wholly unreasonable.