Achilles’ heel
UNM has struggled to cover smaller guards thus far
The UNM men’s basketball team has struggled to cover guards so far this season
Basketball is a tall man’s game. Except when it’s not. And for the University of New Mexico Lobos, one of the top 10 tallest teams in the country with an average roster height of 6-feet-7-inches per player, the added size and length on this year’s team was supposed to do one thing more than any other. The Lobos (3-1) were supposed to be better on defense.
Instead the UNM defense has been below average, to say the least. And the most consistent damage has come from the hot hand of the shortest player on the court.
In each of UNM’s four games, the opposing team has had a point guard under 6-feet tall. Those four guards — 5-8 Terrell Gomez, Cal State-Northridge; 5-11 Asante Gist, Iona; 5-9 A.J. Harris, New Mexico State; and 5-10 Evan Gilyard, UTEP — have combined for the following stat line against the Lobos: 23.3 points per game, 18-for35 (51.4 percent) on 3-pointers and
21 free throw attempts.
To put that into context, the 4.5 made 3-pointers per game the opposing diminutive guard has been averaging is more than the 4.0 made 3-pointers Lobo star senior Anthony Mathis (4.0/game) has had during his blistering start to the season.
“There’s no question. That’s two now that have kind of got us,” Lobos second-year head coach Paul Weir said on Saturday night referring only to the past two games when Harris and Gilyard combined to make 11 3-pointers.“We’ll go back and look at the film, but it was on everybody. It wasn’t on really our bigs that I can remember . ... It’s been kind of spread out.”
The shared blame is by design in UNM’s man-to-man, pressure defensive scheme.
While constructing his current roster, Weir and his staff recruited predominantly long, athletic players. The goal was to be able to be so athletic at every position — 1 through 5 (point guard through center) — that when an opposing team sets a screen on the court to get a player open, the Lobos could just switch defenders and eliminate that momentary space normally created when defenders run around the screen.
The problem for UNM has often been big men — remember, their average height is 6-7 — getting switched onto defend a guard a good 8-plus inches shorter. That guard, as fans have seen, have consistently blown by the bigger Lobo defender and either gotten into the lane to create for a teammate, drew a foul or created enough space to get another 3-pointer off. It isn’t exactly a secret. “They’ve got great size,” UTEP coach Rodney Terry said on Saturday. “Their length is good. They switch (ball screens). I think they’re a team you can play downhill on a little bit. We played downhill. When you switch, you kind of have to pick your poison a little bit. When you switch off and you’ve got a 5 (center) on a 1 (point guard), my 1’s got to go make a play either for himself of for someone else. And if I’ve got a pretty good 1, that’s going to be a problem.”
A year ago, the Lobos played nine games against guards shorter than 6-0. Only UNLV’s 5-11 Jordan Johnson gave UNM fits as he averaged 22 points in two games and had 20 free-throw attempts, drawing a high number of fouls. The other seven games UNM played guards under 6-0, those players averaged just 5.9 points, hit a total of nine 3’s and attempted only two free throws. So, what does that mean long term? The good news for the Lobos is only two teams in the Mountain West have a guard under 6-0 playing regular minutes, though Colorado State’s 5-10 freshman Kendall Moore is a freshman who can get hot and No. 6 Nevada’s 5-10 junior Jazz Johnson is hitting an average of 3.0 3-pointers through six games this season, second only to Mathis (4.0) in the MWC.
And as for the rest of non-conference play? There are four guards who meet the dangerous profile among UNM’s next seven Division I opponents: