Las Vegas • BYU guard Paisley Johnson scored 20 points and held the West Coast Conference’s player of the year to a single point in the second half as the Cougars edged Pepperdine 68-63 in a women’s semifinal Monday afternoon at Orleans Arena.
The second-seeded Cougars (24-6) will face top-seeded Gonzaga (28-3) in the championship game on Tuesday at 2 p.m. MDT and the winner will advance to the NCAA Tournament. Both schools are probably in the Big Dance, but Monday’s win was big for BYU, which most observers believed was just inside the bubble.
Pepperdine led 38-32 at halftime behind Yasmin Robinson-Bacote’s 18 points, but the Waves’ star was held without a field goal in the second half and finished with 19.