Warwick Senators sensation Elijah Pepper dropped 50-plus point games in his opening two matches of the NBL1 West season and followed it up with 48 on Thursday night.
Pepper’s 49.7 points a game average makes him the most prolific shooter in the country right now and has boosted the Senators to second in the NBL1 West conference.
What’s more — the 193cm combo guard is showing no signs of slowing down.
With 28 three-pointers made and 21 made free throws, Pepper spoke to NBL1 Media about the simply absurd purple patch he has entered.
“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 cliché as it sounds,” Pepper said.
“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.”
Pepper was born in Shepparton with his father, Ryan, renowned as one of the finest imports the Shepparton Gators have seen as he averaged 29.5 points a game during 81 appearances for the side from 1999-2002.
The family moved permanently to the United States when Pepper was two and, after growing up in Washington State, the NBL1 West’s top shooter completed a five-year college career at UC Davis.
He then joined the Perth Wildcats’ roster for the 2024-25 NBL season and averaged 7.1 points, 1.2 assists and 2.2 rebounds a game.
It was a solid start to life in the pro game for the 23-year-old.
But nothing could have prepared the NBL1 West for what Pepper was about to do to the league when he threw on Senators colours.
He began with 50 points in a 37-point beating of Lakeside Lightning before leaving Rockingham Flames smarting as he dropped 51 during a 134-109 win.
Pepper had his statistically ‘worst’ game in round three, popping off with a cool 48 points in a nail-biting 102-98 victory over Joondalup Wolves on Thursday — meaning every time he has taken the court, he’s nearly broken a record.
Joe Cook-Green racked up 54 points in a single game for the Perth Redbacks in 2023 and, while he’s been within striking distance, Pepper has flirted with the idea of etching his own name in the history books.
“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 55 points is the barrier to break, Pepper claims his best game goes well beyond the current NBL1 record.
He spoke of a legendary performance in his high school days, where his corroborative witness was someone who knew a thing or two about scoring on the court.
“In 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,” Pepper 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.”
Pepper’s next chance to break the scoring record arrives on Saturday night and it comes with a storyline only sport could write.
The Senators take on Perth Redbacks, where he’ll go toe-to-toe against current NBL1 record holder Cook-Green in a duel between the competition’s best knock down shooters.
