How the Lobos and Bulldogs match up

individually, they’ve improved,” said Neal, whose Lobos (16-10, 9-5 MWC) play Fresno State (15-11, 7-7) today at 4 p.m. in a game televised on CBS Sports Network.

“And when they improve individually, our team improves. And that’s a good thing, because they’ve worked at it.”

While the season isn’t exactly the same type of marathon grind as professional baseball teams face, the Lobos players, it would seem, showed more patience for the length of the season ahead than their fans did after starting league play with a 2-3 record. And nobody in the UNM locker room panicked four games ago when senior leader Tim Williams went down with a stress reaction in his left foot that could keep him out another couple of weeks.

In fact, the Lobos are 3-1 since Williams went down, and their 7-2 record in their past nine games is tied with Colorado State for the best in the league over that stretch of the Mountain West’s 18-game schedule.

“I think they understand where they are,” Neal said of his team’s spot in the league title hunt — sitting in fourth place, but only one game behind first-place CSU. “If you look at our team, where we’ve come from when we were 2-3, we’ve made some great strides. We’re going to end up playing five or six games without Tim Williams, and we’ve had some great contributions from some guys that are some unsung heroes for our team.”

Those unsung heroes, Neal said, have been different from game to game over the past month. More often than not, it hasn’t just been about league-leading scorer Elijah Brown and Williams, pre-injury, carrying the entire offensive load.

“Those guys (the non-Brown, nonWilliams Lobos) have really made great strides,” said Neal. “It’s right there. They’ve worked their way back into contention.”

FINAL FOUR: The last four games for the Lobos are tough ones. In fact, aside from being underdogs on the road today, the statistical analytics site KenPom.com predicts UNM to go 2-2 in the final four games, losing today and next Saturday at Wyoming.

The KenPom computer, which has an 8-6 record in picking UNM games during conference play, predicts none of UNM’s final four regular season games will be decided by more than three points.