Several Pepperdine men's basketball players tell TMZ Sports they feared for their lives as the wildfires raged near their campus this weekend.
Flames have ravaged Southern California the past few days ... and when they crept up on Pepperdine's Malibu campus Friday ... students were forced to flee to the school's gym before they ultimately evacuated.
Pepperdine guard Jade' Smith says it was one of the most frightening things he's ever experienced.
"It was wild. It was crazy. It was honestly one of the scariest experiences of my life," Smith says.
"There was a point where they started to come around and it felt like they surrounded us almost."
The Waves postponed their game against CSU Northridge on Saturday ... and were thankful just to be safe when we got them ahead of their upcoming road trip at LAX on Monday.
"We were stuck in the gym and we saw the fire coming over the hill to the campus," forward Kessler Edwards says.
"It almost got some of the buildings."
Pepperdine is headed to Colorado for a game Tuesday before it hits the Bahamas for a tourney later this week ... and ya gotta hear how happy forward Kameron Edwards is to be leaving the fires behind.