Why the NBL1 West is Pepper's perfect fit

Feature image via: Vikki Edwards | @vadele photography

Perth Wildcat Elijah Pepper is currently on an unprecedented streak in the NBL1 West. 

Scoring 101 points total across his first two games, the Warwick Senators superstar has made his mark on the competition already. With 18 three-pointers made and 15 made free throws, we had to ask the man himself how this is even possible. 

“It's definitely not something that's just easy. I kind of get how people say that, but it's much tougher than it looks, as probably cliche as it sounds,” Pepper told NBL1 Media.

“I just tell myself, be aggressive. A lot of these are shots that I'm working on every single day I'm in the gym. Putting these kinds of shots up and just being confident in them. It helps that I've gotten the green light from the coaching staff, and I got the belief from my teammates that I'm going to make those shots. 

“So when you have the confidence and support from everybody around you, that's definitely something that helps with putting them in the basket.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by NBL (@nbl)

While the Perth Redbacks’ Joe Cook-Green currently holds the record for most points in a game with 54, Pepper believes he has a chance to break it in 2025. 

“Nobody mentioned the 54 to me until the end of the second game. When I was basically subbed out, they're like ‘dude, you're like three or four points off the record’,” he said.

“So it'd be nice to, I'd like to say no, but when you get to 50 points with four minutes left, it's kind of hard to say that you don't want to go for the record. It's helpful that our offence has been so elite that we haven't had to play the starters in the last four or five minutes. 

“But obviously that's not going to be the case all season. You never know… I wouldn't be upset if I were able to get it, that's for sure.” 

While officially his scoring record for a single game is the recent 51 points. While he said he’d love to manifest getting to 55 in NBL1, Pepper elaborated that his father can back his claims of an even greater scoring outburst in AAU. 

“But in a high school, and my dad can vouch for me, I had 68 in a game. But that's not something that goes into a website where you can just look it up,” he said. 

“That's where they just record the paper stats and they put down how many baskets you made, what the points were, and you just add it up. But I'm still gonna claim the 68.”

When asked if he could do that in NBL1, Pepper was hesitant, but he didn’t rule it out. 

“I might need an overtime or two, but you’d probably need about 15 three-pointers in there as well with 10 free throws. But you never know, it's something where if you get hot, it could happen. It'd be nice.” 

Pepper explained that while he could have gone overseas for more money, he decided that playing in the NBL1 and staying close to the Wildcats’ ecosystem was going to benefit his second season in the NBL the most. 

“It's been massive (staying in Western Australia), actually. It was one of the decisions that led to me staying here, my personal development and improvement. I spoke to my agent, my family, and the coaching staff at Wildcats, because I’m contracted for next year,” he said.

“We talked about going to Europe, which potentially could be a bit more money and a little bit higher level of games, but I'm not getting that level of development and experience in terms of workouts personally that I'm having here.

“We practice twice for Warwick, I'm working out five or six days a week for Wildcats, three or four days a week in the weight room and on court almost every single day. That's something that just adds up, and I've already noticed a significant improvement, and it's only been a month.

“So that's been it's been huge for me and hopefully it keeps continuing to be that way over the next couple months, and it goes even better into NBL26.” 

After dropping back-to-back 50-point games, anyone would be feeling more confident. Pepper added how the start of the NBL1 West season has built on that, and hopefully will translate to a break-out season coming into his second run with the Wildcats. 

“It's definitely going to be an increase just based on how I'm playing now. I'd like to say that I'm going to keep up the averaging 50 points, but if you're being realistic, that's extremely hard to do, especially in a league that's competitive and where you'd expect a specific game plan and stuff like that,” he said. 

“But just being a focal point of the offence and having the ball in your hands, that makes the confidence automatically go up regardless of how it's going. It's one of those things that the longer you play in NBL1, the more confident I'm going to be going into NBL. It'll be really good to be able to try and carry that over into the start of NBL26 and hopefully have a good season there as well.”

The Senators will take on local rivalries, the Joondalup Wolves, tonight from 6:30pm AWST live and free via Kayo Freebies.