Down to wire
Lobo men dress only six scholarship players, falter in final minute at Utah State
LOGAN, Utah — Paul Weir wasn’t happy as he stood in a hallway outside the UNM Lobos locker room Wednesday night beneath the orange and yellow chairback seats of the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum.
He couldn’t care less that his short-handed Lobos — several issues led to the team suiting up only six scholarship players Wednesday night — had fought until the bitter end. They were within three points in the final minute of a road game against a Utah State team that statistically dominated his squad and eventually earned an 89-80 win over UNM in front of an announced crowd of 6,345.
None of it mattered to the first-year Lobos coach.
“We wanted to win and I think we all expected to win,” Weir said. “We didn’t. We’re disappointed. We have to get better. We’ll worry about some of the other distractions (later). There’s no moral victories.”
Utah State’s sophomore star, Koby McEwen, a player with Canadian roots who was once recruited by Weir when he was an assistant coach
at New Mexico State, scored 31 points to go along with 13 rebounds, six assists and three steals while playing all 40 minutes for the Aggies (13-11, 6-5 Mountain West).
The game dropped the Lobos to 11-12 overall and 6-4 in the Mountain West.
“When he’s making 3s like that, he’s a really hard guard,” said Weir. “Obviously, he had the (banked in 3-pointer) and he had some tough ones. Some of those shots, I’m OK with, to be honest with you. He’s just a good player making really, really good shots.”
UNM played without seven of the program’s 13 scholarship players — three of whom played in Saturday’s win over Colorado State in Albuquerque.
Three players (transfers JaQuan Lyle and Vance Jackson and injured Connor MacDougall) haven’t played all season. Sam Logwood hasn’t played since the Jan. 3 loss at Boise State with both a shoulder injury and while he tried to meet unspecified benchmarks Weir has said are needed to rejoin the team. Junior Jachai Simmons flew home Tuesday because of a death in his family. Freshman Vladimir Pinchuk is out with a concussion Weir said he didn’t want to discuss details of after the game.
Most damaging in the game, however, was the Wednesday morning announcement that senior point guard Antino Jackson, the team’s leader in assists and second-leading scorer in league play, was suspended for one game.
Weir would not say what Antino Jackson did, but Jackson tweeted an apology to teammates and Lobo fans Wednesday saying he made a “mistake” and knew he let his team down.
“We’re trying to build a program here,” Weir said. “We’re trying to build a really strong foundation. Don’t want any cracks in that foundation . ...
“When you’re holding someone accountable and trying to build a program, it’s not out of convenience. It would have been really easy for me to play him this game. And maybe that’s what he’s used to or other guys are used to, but that’s not how I want this program to be built.”
Jackson’s absence, and that of his other teammates, caused the Lobos to play more zone than they’ve played all season and alter their defensive style of play to try to protect their only two forwards suited up — 6-foot-9 Joe Furstinger and 6-5 Makuach Maluach.
It worked at times, and, despite USU building 15-point leads on multiple occasions and shooting 56.4 percent in the game, the Lobos chipped away in the second half.
Junior Anthony Mathis scored a careerhigh 25 points and was 6-of-10 from 3-point range. He had five assists and at one point scored 14 of UNM’s 15 points in a secondhalf stretch that put the Lobos in position to force overtime in the final minute.
Junior Chris McNeal played most of the point guard minutes in Jackson’s absence and scored 21 points.
The comeback fell short with a Mathis foul of Quinn Taylor with 32.1 seconds left and the score now 85-80. Taylor missed his free throw but got the rebound, which led UNM to foul again. McEwen then hit two free throws to ice the game at 87-80.