The Waves enter their matchup against San Francisco on Friday with a 10-3 record
Five Pepperdine Waves athletes scooped up weekly honors from their respective conferences last week.
Men’s volleyball player Ryan Graves was named the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Offensive Player of the Week on March 18. The next day, the West Coast Conference placed the Doubles Team of the Week honor on two Waves tennis pairs. Women’s tennis players Savannah Broadus and Janice Tjen and men’s players Carlsson Halldin and George Davis were named the conference’s top duos in their sports on March 19.
Graves, a freshman setter, seized his first offensive weekly honor from the MPSF five days after leading the Waves to a 3-1 victory over the 11th-ranked USC Trojans and then a sweep over the Concordia Golden Eagles on March 16. Graves, from Irvine, had 47 assists, tying a career high, in the triumph over the Trojans. His passing helped Pepperdine achieve a .358 hitting percentage. Against Concordia, Graves served up 37 assists and 10 digs as Pepperdine registered a .513 hitting percentage.
Graves averaged 12 assists and 2 digs a set in the two matches. Pepperdine had an average .423 hitting percentage with 14.86 kills a set.
Graves tallied 47 assists, 3 digs, 2 blocks, 1 ace, and 2 kills in Pepperdine’s 3-2 loss to the BYU Cougars on March 22. The next day, BYU beat Pepperdine in five sets again. Graves rang up 38 assists, 6 digs, 2 kills, and 1 block.
The Waves enter their Saturday matchup against USC with a 16-7 record.
Broadus, a junior, and Tjen, a senior, have now won the WCC Doubles Team of the Week award five times this season. The duo, who are the country’s second-ranked doubles team, garnered the honor after staging a come-from-behind victory over the 14th-ranked doubles team, Hannah Viller Moeller and Mao Mushika of California, on March 17. The 7-6 (3) win pushed Broadus and Tjen’s record to 9-0 this season.
The Pepperdine pair came back to force the California twosome into a tiebreak. Viller Moeller and Mushika took a 3-0 lead, but Tjen and Broadus stormed back to tie the match and then used their rackets to register four consecutive points to give the Waves the doubles point in their 6-1 victory over California.
Broadus and Tjen have an overall record of 20-1 this year. Their only loss was in the semifinals of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association National Fall Championship last November.
Broadus and Tjen defeated 15th-ranked duo Emma Charney and Eryn Cayetano 6-3 in Pepperdine’s 4-0 win over USC on March 24. The Waves enter their matchup against San Francisco on Friday with a 10-3 record.
Halldin, a sophomore, and Davis, a graduate student, won the WCC’s weekly doubles award on the men’s side after grabbing an upset win over Max Westphal and Nicolas Kotzen of Columbia, the 22nd-ranked doubles team in the country, on March 13. The win was the Waves pair’s first win over a top 25 duo this season.
Halldin and Davis downed Harvard’s Cooper Williams and Ronan Jachuck 6-3 two days after the win over the Columbia pair. The Pepperdine twosome’s wins resulted in them garnering their first-ever WCC weekly recognition.
Halldin and Davis were beaten 6-4 by Cesar Bouchelaghem and Dzianis Zharyn in Pepperdine’s 4-3 defeat of Washington on March 21. On March 24 in the Waves’ 4-0 victory over Gonzaga, the two beat Sasha Trkulja and Matthew Hollingworth 6-3.
The Waves have a 7-9 record heading into their match against San Diego on Saturday.