Senior Jackson has become the go-to player for the Lobos
Weir has trusted guard late in games
There are no stars. There aren’t even regular starters.
And, while that’s by Paul Weir’s design for the University of New Mexico Lobos, it appears that maybe a little adjustment of the coach’s initial thoughts about his roster. He has brought the team to the point where it appears to have found its go-to player (or two) in key moments of tight games.
In both Wednesday’s comefrom-behind road win at UNLV and Saturday’s come-from behind home win against San Diego State, Weir called a timeout and drew up a play for senior point guard Antino Jackson to take the potential game-winning shot.
“All my guys accept me getting the ball at the last second because they ... believe in me that I’m going to make a good play,” Jackson said Saturday. “Last game, at UNLV, I came off, I got doubled, I passed it to Anthony, he hit the Saturday Colorado State at New Mexico 7 p.m., ESPN3.com, 770 AM/94.5 FM 3. It’s pretty much trust. I think they all trust me and I trust them. If anybody was open, I’d would have passed them the ball and made the play.”
At UNLV, with the Rebels leading 81-80, Weir called a timeout to draw up a play with 27 seconds remaining. It was designed for Jackson, but as he began to pen-
etrate, he drew a double team in the lane. That second defender had been guarding Anthony Mathis.
“We just did circle, which is our inbounds play,” Mathis said. “I get the ball, just calm down a little. Let everybody get set. Found Antino and he does such a good job penetrating, so they came and doubled him. I don’t know if that was their game plan or not, but they came and doubled him. So I had a little space, so I just shot it with confidence and it just went in.”
With the double team on him, Jackson made the right call and kicked it to Mathis, who drained the 3-pointer to put UNM up, for good, at 83-81. The Lobos got a defensive stop at the other end, leading to a Joe Furstinger rebound and a UNLV foul. Furstinger iced the game with two free throws with 3 seconds remaining.
On Saturday in the Pit, the game was tied at 75-75 with 37 seconds remaining when Weir called a timeout and drew something up for Jackson.
“We had an action to kind of let him go one-on-one,” Weir explained of what he drew up.
Jackson got the inbounds and, after a few dance moves at the top of the key, including at one point almost losing the ball, the 6-foot grad transfer from Akron blew by SDSU’s Devin Watson. He hit the brakes and pulled up for a 15-foot jumper to go up, for good, at 77-75 with 22.6 seconds remaining.
“I didn’t know it was going to be 35 different dribbles in 10 different directions and whatever that was.”
In both instances, the ball was in Jackson’s hands in the final moments with the game on the line.
That, alone, is something most around the program might not have believed just two months ago. Weir wasn’t hiding his frustration with Jackson’s conversion from shooting guard (he did score 1,000 points in three seasons at Akron before his transfer) to point guard.
“His biggest thing is defense and he don’t want his point guards turning over the ball,” Jackson said of Weir.
And, frankly, Jackson wasn’t always as clean on those two fronts as he needed to be. But now? Well, Saturday night he scored 24 points, a career-high as a Lobo, dished six assists and had zero turnovers. He is third in Mountain West games in assists (5.3 per game) and fifth in assist-to-turnover ratio (2.0, or 48 assists to 24 turnovers).
But Weir now says that for Jackson, and even some for Mathis, too, he might have been the problem with them getting off to slower starts than needed.
“If anything, I’ve got to take the hit for probably overcoaching a little bit,” Weir said. “It took me a little bit of time to understand Antino’s game. It took me a little bit of time to appreciate how great Anthony Mathis was. And I probably, early in the season, was doing
some stuff that might have held them back. And, organically as this season has unfolded, I think we’ve made some adjustments for both of them — to give Ant a little bit of freedom and to give Tone, you know, more looks at the rim. If anything, their rise might have been me holding them back earlier. Just overcoaching, probably.”
LOCKER ROOM TALK: Weir said that while his team is as confident as it’s been all season, the feel in the locker room after the past two wins — closing UNLV out by scoring the game’s final nine points and closing SDSU out on an 11-2 scoring run — wasn’t one of a surprised team.
“I thought the Wyoming game (Jan. 10 after UNM had lost two of its previous three games) was the most positive, relieffilled locker room we’ve had,” Weir said. “I thought the UNLV locker room and the San Diego State locker room was like, we know we could have done this.”