Lobos go cold in loss to Boise St.
The University of New Mexico men’s basketball team may have righted the ship with last week’s win at San Jose State, but it missed a golden opportunity to get back into good standing with the NCAA Tournament selection committee in a Wednesday night loss at Boise State.
The Lobos went ice cold down the stretch, missing 11 of 12 shots from the field in the final three minutes of an 82-77 loss to the Broncos at ExtraMile Arena.
“I think we played very, very hard; I don’t think we played that smart,” said UNM coach Richard Pitino. “Especially at the offensive end in the second half.”
UNM has dropped five of its past six games and once again finds itself in a tie for fifth place in the Mountain West Conference standings with San Jose State. UNM (20-8, 7-8) has three games remaining in the regular season.
The story behind Wednesday’s setback was Boise State’s defense on Jamal Mashburn Jr. The Lobos junior shooting guard had his 48-game double-digit scoring streak snapped in what proved to be one of the toughest games of his college career.
He shot just 2-for-15 from the field and scored seven points. He had twice as many personal fouls as he had made shots. It was the first time since a twopoint performance against UTEP on Dec. 12, 2021 that he hadn’t reached at least 10 in a game.
“I thought he missed some that he normally makes,” Pitino said of Mashburn.
Morris Udeze had a double-double for the Lobos with 18 points and 14 rebounds while Jaelen House managed 14 points despite his own struggles shooting. He missed 10 of his 14 shots and was 1-for-6 from 3-point territory.
UNM was seeking a season sweep of Boise State. Instead, the Broncos (22-6,
12-3) remained a game behind San Diego State in the MWC race.
For a good portion of Wednesday’s game, the Lobos looked like the better team. They trailed 20-15 nine minutes in but scored eight straight points to kickstart what became a sustained 22-4 run that opened a 37-24 lead on a putback by Udeze with three minutes left in the first half.
The Broncos went ice cold in that span, at one point missing 12 of 13 shots as UNM’s balanced scoring was its biggest weapon.
The Lobos managed to go the final 4:54 of the half without House on the floor. He picked up his second foul with UNM up by 10 and didn’t return until the start of the second half. Boise State had regained its shooting touch by then.
The Broncos cut it to 41-40 on a Max Rice 3-pointer early in the second half, then officially erased their 13-point deficit moments later Rice hit a layup to make it 49-48.
Foul problems started to become an issue with the Lobos before the midway point of the second half. House, Mashburn and Josiah Allick all had three before Rice’s go-ahead bucket at the 13:29 mark. All three sat on the bench for a brief period as the Broncos extended their lead to 56-52 at the under-12 media timeout.
Rice had 22 points in the second half; Mashburn was scoreless in that same span, missing all eight shots he took after halftime.
“We got into some scramble situations and let [Rice] loose a little bit where we had to be better,” Pitino said.
Udeze picked up his fourth foul with 6:19 left during an extended dry spell for the UNM offense.
The nail in the proverbial coffin came in the final five minutes when a pair of Rice 3-pointers opened an eight-point lead. The first came after teammate
Naje Smith missed a pair of free throws that led to a Tyson Degenhart offensive rebound, which was fed to Rice for an open 3 to make it 68-63.
Degenhart was 0-for-8 from 3-point territory but did have 13 points with seven rebounds.
The Broncos’ lead grew to 10 before a late UNM push made it respectable at the final buzzer.
NOTES
Boise State made 20 of 30 free throw attempts in the second half. The Lobos attempted just 12 from the stripe after halftime . ... Mashburn took a hard fall to the floor late in the game and spent valuable minutes on the bench in the waning moments. Pitino did not have an update on his status.