Lobos missing outside shooting attack
Utah State fans ask coach Neal: ‘Where’s your son?’
Early in the first half of Wednesday night’s Mountain West basketball game in Logan, Utah, the Utah State student section — the few dozen that made it out in the hellacious snow and ice storm that hit near Cache Valley this week — had a simple question for the opposing coach.
“Where’s your son? Where’s your son? Where’s your son?”
The chants in the largely empty Dee Glen Smith Spectrum, which seats 10,270 but probably had more like 2,000 in it on Wednesday, were heard loud and clear across the court from the students where the University of New Mexico Lobos bench was located.
Craig Neal, the Lobos’ fourthyear head coach and father of former UNM guard Cullen Neal, who was a favorite target of “The Hurd” student section in recent years before transferring after last season to Ole Miss, not only heard the chant, but during a dead ball, acknowledged it. Neal looked at them, then looked up and down his bench, looked back at the student section and gave a big shrug, palms to the sky and shoulder raised.
While the student section laughed for a moment, it quickly started an “Ole Miss sucks!” chant and the game resumed.
But the question still loomed
large, and has all season for a Lobos team that isn’t only struggling to hit 3-pointers this season, but one that doesn’t even seem to have players willing to take them.
As Lobo senior forward Tim Williams was having one of the most dominant games any MWC player has had this season, scoring 20 first half points against a wide variety of Aggies defensive schemes, one in particular defense started to work in the second half that limited Williams’ damage to just 10 more points in Utah State’s 79-75 win.
“We were going to double him with our point guard because he is so used to seeing the other post guy come and double,” said Utah State coach Tim Duryea. “Williams does a great job getting the ball to the weak side where the shooters are. We wanted to double off of the point guard, making Williams throw it out to him and close out because he’s not really a shooter.”
UNM is getting just 12 percent of its scoring from the point guard spot, which ranks 340th of 351 Division I teams according to KenPom.com.
Yes, Lobo freshman Jalen Harris has come into his own in recent weeks and has shown flashes of becoming real good (he did, after all, have eight assists on Wednesday), but he isn’t an outside scoring threat helping to space the floor and open up the offense.
UNM played without injured point guard Jordan Hunter, who is third on the team with 10 made 3-pointers (10-of-24 this season, 41.7 percent). That left the nonHarris minutes at the point guard spot to a combination of Anthony Mathis, a shooting guard who played all of 16 minutes this season entering the game and is just 1-of-6 (16.7 percent) from beyond the arc and Elijah Brown, who because of foul trouble played just 15 minutes, and none during stretches when Utah State’s doubling off the point guard spot was going on.
It wasn’t just Wednesday, either. UNM has hit just 61-of-197 3-pointers this season (31.0 percent).
That’s 65 fewer attempts than any other MWC team and 251 fewer than league-leading Wyoming (448), and it’s just midseason. As for the makes, UNM’s 61-made treys this season is 31 below the 92 they had made through the first 15 games last season.
More important, as it couples with UNM’s poor 3-point shooting defense, the Lobos have been outscored at the 3-point line by opponents this season by 219 points (134 made 3s to 61).
While UNM leads the nation in point distribution from the free throw line (28.2 percent of their offense is scored there), they are 349th (of 351) in points from the 3-point line (16.4 percent).
“We haven’t been shooting the ball well from the 3-point line all year,” Neal said. “A year ago, we had 92 3-pointers at this time (through 15 games). Now we have 61. It wasn’t a concern of mine. Now it’s a concern.”
Three Lobos have shown ability to hit 3s: Brown (29-of-91, 31.9 percent), Dane Kuiper (14-of-31, 45.2 percent) and Hunter (10-of-24, 41.7 percent). The rest of the Lobos roster is 8-of-51 (15.7 percent) with freshman Damien Jefferson (1-of15) and Harris (1-of-8), two freshmen Neal has tried to give larger scoring responsibilities at times this season, struggling the most.
BAD NEWS: The Nos. 1 and 2 3-point defenses in MWC games (only three have been played) are Nevada (allowing 26.8 percent) and UNLV (29.2 percent). Those are UNM’s next two opponents.
BEEN AWHILE: The last time the MWC’s one-time trio of top teams — UNM, SDSU and UNLV — lost on the same night as they did on Wednesday at March 9, 2013, which was the final day of the regular season when seeding implications for the conference tournament had pretty much already been decided and UNM had already clinched a league title.