No room for error against San Diego St.
They’ve combined to win 18 Mountain West championships since the conference was founded, yet the two teams with the most crowded trophy cases are doing all the chasing this season.
For San Diego State’s men’s basketball team, it’s unfamiliar territory. Entering Saturday night’s game in The Pit, the Aztecs (11-6, 3-3) are a familiar program with a vastly different feel. Gone is the MWC’s winningest coach, Steve Fisher, and in his place is first-year man Brian Dutcher, a lifelong assistant trying to keep the momentum going.
At The University of New Mexico, it’s Paul Weir, himself a lifelong assistant who’s now in his second straight inaugural campaign, first at New Mexico State and now in Albuquerque.
While Dutcher’s club has struggled as of late, losing two in a row and four of its last eight to fall into fifth place in the Mountain West standings, Weir’s Lobos are learning that sheer effort and making the most of what little there is to work with are keys to surpassing expectations.
UNM is coming off its first road win of the season, beating UNLV in Las Vegas earlier in the week. At 4-3 in league play, the Lobos are the surprise team of the conference three weeks into the MWC schedule.
“We talked after the Fresno game and said, ‘Guys, the reality is for us to do the things that we all want to do, everyone has to play well,’ ” Weir said. “That’s just the reality of it. We have eight bullets in the chamber and we can’t have one bullet not fire. Joe [Furstinger] has to have a great game, the guards have to make shots, we have to stay out of foul trouble, the point guards can’t turn over the ball. Whatever our top five or six things are, we have to nail on all of those to win a game at Fresno, to win in the Mountain West Conference Tournament, to win a game at UNLV.”
Despite a well-documented shortage of players, the Lobos are somehow finding their way through while dealing with a lack of height in the post, experience in the back court and a slow-go in the learning curve at point guard. Senior Antino Jackson and junior Chris McNeal, both first-year players at UNM, have combined for 87 turnovers at the point.
The strain of the miscues combined with escalating minutes due to zero depth and the unavoidable cold shooting night from a player or two means the Lobos’ margin for error is minuscule, at best.
“I can’t come back into the locker room to see that Joe played 14 minutes because he was in foul trouble or Anthony Mathis went 0-for-6, or Chris or Antino have a five-turnover game,” Weir said. “We have to be able to hit on all those things and I think that balance truly, kind of, gives us our best shot at winning.”
And then there’s this: The Lobos’ full-court press and issues with playing man-to-man have worn people down and exposed cracks in the system. In short, the team is doing its best based on effort alone.
“We have a pretty much zero-margin for error defensively,” Weir said. “We don’t have a lot of defensive weapons. We have a lot of good offensive players that are still trying to figure out themselves, how to become good defensive players, and then me as a coach, how to put them all in the best place to succeed defensively.”
On Saturday night in The Pit, the latest test comes against the MWC’s gold standard.