Lobos in thick of race for high seed
New Mexico also has tiebreaker edges
When the San Diego State Aztecs knocked off the Air Force Falcons on Wednesday night in Colorado, it clinched one small victory for the Lobo basketball team.
Even if the Falcons win the rest of their four games this regular season, and the Lobos lose all three of theirs, the Lobos can finish no worse than eighth place in the Mountain West.
For a team picked ninth in the preseason media poll (the Journal picked UNM seventh), that’s a small victory in itself.
But that was October. The Lobos (14-14, 9-6 MW) are alone in fourth place and in the thick of a six-team cluster jockeying for position between the Nos. 3 and 8 spots in the standings. The top five seeds receive byes into the quarterfinals of the conference tournament.
In short: UNM has put itself in the somewhat precarious position of having outplayed low expectations and now facing the reality of having pressure on it for its final three regular- season games.
“If you told me this at the beginning of conference play, I think all of us would have taken it,” Lobos head coach Paul Weir said Tuesday after UNM’s road upset at Wyoming. “It’s a special place to be. Obviously it means
it’s a really big game coming up on Sunday (against UNLV).”
But while Weir has been consistent this season in not letting emotion get in the way of the task at hand or preparing for the next game, even he admits he’s happy his players are now seeing the payoff for the demanding culture he has been trying to establish.
“Just to be in meaningful games in February is fun,” Weir said. “Did we know we were going to be in these kinds of games in February earlier this season? I don’t know. But all we’ve done all year is just keep working really hard. I’m really happy for these guys. “They’re getting to reap the rewards a little bit. All the two-a-days and three-a-days when other teams are doing walk-throughs and they’re wondering how crazy I am and all that stuff.”
The next three games for UNM are Sunday in Dreamstyle Arena vs. UNLV (8-7 MWC and in a three-way tie for seeds 5-7), Wednesday at Colorado State (4-12 and locked into the ninth or 10th seed) and March 3 at home against Fresno State (10-5, in third place).
Tiebreakers, which the league likely will require with six teams between Fresno State’s 10-5 and Utah State’s 7-8, seem to be in UNM’s favor. The Lobos already have headto-head season sweeps of San Diego State (8-7) and Wyoming (8-7).
After head-to-head tiebreakers, the league then goes to how tied teams did vs. the No. 1 team in the standings. Assuming Nevada (13-2) stays atop the standings as the No. 1 seed, the league’s unbalanced schedule that had UNM play the Wolf Pack only once could help. The league views 0-1 to be a better record than 0-2, though they both have the same win percentage. Many teams in the middle of the pack are 0-2 vs. Nevada.
POSTSEASON: While not 100 percent ruling it out, UNM athletic director Eddie Nuñez on Thursday told the Journal it is unlikely he will approve for the Lobos men’s or women’s basketball teams any tournament that requires the university to pay to play in (i.e., the CBI or CIT Tournaments). For the men, that means NIT or NCAA Tournament or bust, and for the women that means NCAA Tournament or WNIT. The WNIT does cost schools to play, though not nearly as much as the other tournaments.
As has been the case for several years, the Pit is not available to host postseason games because UNM has signed a multiyear contract to host the Ty Murray Invitational bull riding event March 16-18, the first week of postseason play.