Lobos aiming to end troubling losing skid
30-point defeat against BYU was UNM’s 3rd straight loss
No, it’s not a must win. But considering the way the UNM Lobos have lost their past three basketball games — not just with poor play, but troubling signs of bigger issues that have fans as uneasy as they’ve been in years — getting a victory in today’s 7th/8th place game of the Diamond Head Classic in Honolulu against a Washington State team picked to finish last in the Pac-12 sure would be significant.
UNM (7-4) is coming off a 30-point loss to BYU on Wednesday, a lackluster defensive effort that led to the most points allowed and largest margin of defeat for the program since the 2006-07 season.
That game followed a troubling loss Tuesday to Auburn that saw UNM commit 22 turnovers while looking increasingly frustrated against a more athletic team while head coach Craig Neal abandoned his bench in the second half.
That game followed a Saturday night debacle against Rice in which the heavily favored Lobos let a 17-point second half lead evaporate down the stretch with undisciplined play and multiple mental lapses.
In those three losses, UNM has allowed 89.7 points per game, 37 3-pointers, five or more 3-pointers by one opposing player in each game, and allowed the opposing team’s leading scorer — Rice’s Egor Koulechov (32), Auburn’s Kareem Canty (27) and BYU’s Chase Fischer (41) — to score an average of 33.3 points. UNM also averaged 19.0 turnovers leading to an average of 24 points for the opponent.
“Right now they’re not playing together,”
Craig Neal said on a postgame radio show on 770 KKOB-AM.
The coach was heavy on the player criticism on Wednesday, saying “Our game has become an entitlement game,” and several of his players couldn’t get out of their own way and were doing their own thing while not yet showing an understanding of what it means to be a part of the UNM program.
He said his reserves have been inconsistent in their play when on the court, though the box scores show most of them have not seen very consistent minutes from game to game.
After not playing many reserve players in the Auburn game, Neal did so against BYU and said all that proved was those backup players “aren’t as good as the guys starting.”
Last Thursday, after UNM beat New Mexico State by 18 points the night before, Neal held his big three — Elijah Brown, Cullen Neal and Tim Williams — out of practice saying he was worried about the minutes those three had logged this season. In a pre-BYU game radio interview when talking about the big minutes of his starters, Neal said “If they can’t play 30 minutes a game, they shouldn’t be Division I players.”
UNM is the only team in the Mountain West with three active players logging more than 30 minutes per game (Brown, 32.8; Williams, 31.6; and Cullen Neal, 31.1).
The coach also said he was disappointed in his team not following the coaching staff’s instructions in the BYU game. He said the team went over at length Tuesday night how to defend the Cougars 3-point shooters, but in the game, his team “just didn’t do it.”
Despite it all, the Lobos are still in a position, with a win today, to still feel relatively confident heading into league play Wednesday at home against Nevada as the Mountain West race appears to be wide open.
“We’ll get it corrected,” Craig Neal said. “... We’ve got a whole conference season to go and this is a great learning process. You don’t lose. You learn.”
TOURNEY TROUBLES: The Lobos are 3-5 under Craig Neal in nonconference tournaments events with at least one double-digit loss in each and high turnovers becoming a theme.
In those five losses, the Lobos have averaged 18.0 turnovers (they are averaging 19.5 in the two losses this week in Hawaii).