Aggies’ Harris a nightmare in Lobos’ loss

NMSU has won last four matches against New Mexico in Rio Grande Rivalry

ALBUQUERQUE — Somewhere out there, the memories of Clayton Shields and his miracle 55-foot buzzer beater in Las Cruces surely bounced through the heads of Aggies fans.

Instead, it was the nightmares created by New Mexico State’s A.J. Harris that will haunt the Lobos for the time being.

New Mexico State’s diminutive point guard scorched the University of New Mexico defense for 31 points on 6-for-6 shooting from 3-point range on Saturday, leading the Aggies to a 98-94 win in The Pit for their fourth straight win against their upstate rivals.

Harris was, at times, unstoppable. His 22 points in the second half topped his single-game career high of 20 as the Aggies (3-1) held on for dear life after building a 19-point lead in

the final nine minutes.

New Mexico (2-1) almost pulled off the unforgettable finish, cutting what was a ninepoint deficit with one minute remaining to get the ball with a chance to tie or win in the closing seconds. Trailing 96-94 after an Anthony Mathis layup with seven seconds left, Vance Jackson forced an NMSU turnover and got the ball to Mathis.

The team’s most accurate outside shooter — and the hero with a buzzer-beating 3-pointer in the team’s season opening win at Cal State-Northridge — Mathis spent the entire game saddled with foul trouble but it was he who had a chance to, as he said, make all the fans who headed home early pay for bailing on his team.

Pressured from the moment he got the ball, he saw a crease in the NMSU defense and started to drive but somehow lost his footing and coughed the ball up with 1.3 seconds left. It was almost the wackiest finish in this longstanding rivalry since Shields stunned the Aggies with his two-handed chest heave 23 years ago.

“The desperation we played with in the last 15-20 minutes, we’ve got to have that from the very beginning,” Mathis said.

It’s a level of readiness the Aggies had since arriving in Albuquerque yesterday, Harris said. A transfer from Ohio State who was recruited to NMSU when Paul Weir was still the Aggies’ head coach, he said he took it upon himself to take on the role of team elder and motivational speaker.

“I’ve been leading since we got to the hotel,” he said. “Just getting on my guys about his important game that we have to come out and win.”

The Aggies spotted UNM a 13-5 lead in the first seven minutes but used a 12-0 run to take a lead they’d never give back. Fittingly the lead changed hands at the midpoint of the first half on a Harris jumper.

Held to nine points at the half, Harris exploded in the final 20 minutes to help turn the game into what felt like a blowout in the making.

“That’s an isolated variable,” Weir said. “The rest of it was a rivalry game. It was back, it was forth, it was emotional, it was this and it was that. They just happened to have a guy who really stretched out a big lead for them that we just ran out of time trying to come back from.”

The lead was 75-56 on a Clayton Henry layup with 9:01 to go. It sent hundreds in the nearcapacity crowd streaming out the doors.

“It was funny because we’re down 18, 17 points and everybody started leaving,” Mathis said. “I was like, I want to make these people pay for leaving. So I think we did that; we just didn’t get it done.”

“Shoot, if there was another minute or two in the game it would have been great,” Weir said.

Foul trouble was a major issue for UNM the entire game. Two players fouled out while four others finished with four, including Mathis. He and freshman point guard Drue Drinnon each had three before halftime, leaving one of the country’s biggest teams without much help at point guard.

It didn’t help that some players, like Makuach Maluach, Vladimir Pinchuk and Keith McGee, were quiet most of the way. Maluach didn’t attempt a shot until the midway point of the second half while the three combined for just 11 points.

Jackson led the Lobos with 27 points while Corey Manigault had 20 before fouling out. The pair had nine rebounds between them, but rebounding was a confounding problem all game. The Lobos had just seven boards through the first 25 minutes, a testimony to NMSU’s red-hot shooting that remained above 60 percent until the final few minutes.

Mathis finished with 22 points in just 20 minutes of playing time. He hit 6 of 7 of his tries from 3-point range.

After the game, Weir took the blame for not having the team prepared. As he spoke to the media, Mathis and fellow senior Dane Kuiper sat off to the side in silence. When Weir was asked about losing four straight to the Aggies and, to some extent, having the so-called little brother program now flip the roles in the rivalry, Mathis audibly sighed when Weir gave this response:

“I would say we’re trying to catch them,” he said. “We’ve been trying to catch them since I got here. I think last year they were a better team than us. I don’t think anybody probably would have argued differently. I think going into this year this was on us to prove that we’re the better team and we didn’t do that.”