Brown’s actions have Neal concerned
Flying elbows have drawn league’s ire
It isn’t as though Elijah Brown wasn’t trying to dunk the ball at Air Force last week.
And it isn’t as though the UNM Lobos star junior guard didn’t violently swing his right elbow toward Boise State’s James Reid on Tuesday night in the Pit with any other intent than to hit him.
As chance would have it, Brown not connecting on either saved him from a pair of ejections and, possibly, saved a pair of wins for the Lobos, who are 16-10 overall and at 9-5 in Mountain West play, one game back of first place.
But he may not be entirely in the clear from future punishment from the league.
“He’s got to learn,” Neal said Tuesday night of Brown’s recent incidents. “He’s got to learn from it. That’s why I took him out (of the game for a few minutes). He’s got to calm down and learn from it, and I thought he did. And I thought he came in and made some big plays at the end when we needed it.”
Brown scored 17 of UNM’s final 19 points in Tuesday’s 78-73 win over Boise State, the team that entered the game in first place in the MWC.
On Wednesday, the MWC office confirmed to the it had been in contact with Boise State and UNM to discuss two incidents from Tuesday’s 78-73 Lobos win in the Pit — Brown’s elbow and a postgame argument in the handshake line initiated by Broncos assistant Phil Beckner and responded to by Neal. No discipline was made public by the league.
Last month, MWC Commissioner Craig Thompson sent a harshly worded memo leaguewide saying there would be a “zero tolerance” policy for all future incidents.
“I just think it’s in the heat of the moment,” Neal said Tuesday night of the postgame exchange. He didn’t elaborate.
Said Boise State head coach Leon Rice, “I didn’t see it either. I don’t know. I tried to ask what happened and everybody was like, ‘We got it. We got it.’ So I don’t know.”
Neal and Beckner were seen being very vocal during the review of Brown’s flagrant foul, either toward each other or toward the referees standing between the team benches.
With 12:34 left in the game, Brown threw the elbow at Reid. Referee Verne Harris ruled because the elbow didn’t hit above Reid’s shoulder, it was a flagrant 1 foul. According to the NCAA, a flagrant 2, which carries an automatic ejection, includes “when a player swings an elbow excessively and makes contact with an opponent above the shoulders.”
On Feb. 8 at Air Force, Brown was called for a technical foul in the first half. In the closing seconds of the game, after he was fouled, he ran to the other end of the court and missed a dunk and was called for his second technical, an automatic ejection. But the call was reversed.
“I thought that after the foul that the New Mexico kid was going to flush it,” veteran official Dave Hall said. “But he pulled off so I didn’t call it ... by definition that is an inadvertent whistle.”
Last year, Wyoming guard Josh Adams was suspended one game “for accumulated violations of Mountain West Rule 4 — Sportsmanship,” according to the league after a technical foul.
The league would not comment Wednesday on whether Brown could face any similar penalties for future incidents.