Delaney finds his jump shot
Lobo senior guard achieves balance between shooting and driving
It had been awhile, but Deshawn Delaney’s jump shot seems to have made its return for the Lobos.
When the UNM senior guard sank a corner 3-pointer to put the Lobos ahead of San Jose State 17-4 with 13:19 showing on the first-half clock of Saturday’s win over the Spartans, it marked the first time the team’s leading scorer connected on a shot from beyond the arc since Dec. 31.
He went on to hit two more 3-pointers (a season high) in the 67-41 blowout victory and led the Lobos in scoring (15 points) for just the second time since Dec. 20.
“I think I shot the ball very well,” Delaney said after the game. “Probably the best I’ve shot it since I’ve been here.”
It isn’t as though the 6-foot5 guard was missing a ton of 3-pointers in January (he was 0-for-6 in the month entering the SJSU game). Instead, Delaney’s dilemma as of late has stemmed from striking the right balance between taking the 3-point shot enough to keep defenders honest, having to close on him which opens his ability to attack the rim, and remembering why teams sometimes leave him open out there in the first place.
Earlier this season, Delaney took eight 3-pointers in backto-back losses to Texas A&M and USC, leading his coach, Craig Neal, to remind him about his strength being his ability to attack the rim, not settling for the 3-point shot. Since then, the 3-pointers and long jumpers have been less frequent. But it was clear Delaney was often caught thinking about whether he should take open shots on the outside instead of his usually splitsecond reaction to the game around him. The slight hesitation seemed to slow his usual aggressive approach.
The issues, if there really were any, weren’t as much about the opponent or how teams were defending him, as much as his own approach to the game.
“I don’t think it was a slump; it was a lack of confidence,” Delaney said of his near month-long 3-pointer drought. “I didn’t have the confidence. I started getting into the gym shooting, and I just came out and started (Saturday’s game) with confidence.”
On the season, Delaney leads the team in scoring (12.5 points per game) and rebounds
(5.6) and is shooting 51.8 percent from the field and 35.5 percent from 3-point range.
HUGH’S VISITOR: Nieves Garcia, a 7-year-old Albuquerque resident battling leukemia, shrugged his shoulders Saturday afternoon when asked whether he could shoot better than his good buddy, Lobo senior guard Hugh Greenwood.
“I don’t know,” said Garcia, pulling aside the paper surgi-
cal mask he wore to the game. “Maybe.”
When the Lobos came out for pregame warm-ups Saturday, Greenwood stopped at the bottom of the Pit ramp to give Garcia big hug and talk for a few minutes with him. The Australia native met Garcia last spring while visiting children with cancer at UNM Children’s Hospital.
“He’s great, isn’t he?” Greenwood asked after the game.
“I’m glad he got to come to the game. He’s a great kid.”
BIG WIN/BIG DROP: It was inevitable. No matter what the final outcome of Saturday’s game was, the Lobos knew they were going to take a hit in the Ratings Percentage Index rankings, a tool used by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee, just for taking the court against the struggling Spartans.
After UNM’s 26-point win over SJSU, the Lobos dropped from 94 to 111 in the RPI.
The good news/bad news of the MWC’s unbalanced 18-game schedule is this: UNM won’t take another RPI hit like that this season because they play SJSU only once. But they also aren’t getting the second seemingly guaranteed SJSU victory nine other teams in the league will get (San Diego State is the other school that plays the Spartans only once, since the Aztecs and Lobos were ranked No. 1 and 2 in last year’s final standings and SJSU was last).
In a season that UNM won’t care much about the RPI because its chances of securing an at-large NCAA Tournament berth are gone (they need to win the MWC Tournament to go to the Big Dance), the Lobos would likely trade another RPI hit for playing the Spartans if it meant another win in the standings.