Lobos advance to MWC final

Freshman Garcia scores in second OT to lift UNM to win

SAN JOSE, Calif. — For the second straight season, the University of New Mexico advanced to the Mountain West tournament championship game as true freshman Alesia Garcia scored the winning goal for UNM minutes into the second overtime on Thursday night in a 2-1 semifinal victory over No. 2-seed Wyoming.

“I’m so proud of this team,” said UNM head coach Heather Dyche. “All year long we go down and we get ourselves in these situations and they keep fighting back and they believe in each other, and because of that I don’t ever feel like we are out of a game.”

Garcia’s heroics came less than two minutes into the second overtime period as she was in the right place at the right time following a left-footed shot on goal by Gwen Maly. The shot by Maly was not secured by the Wyoming goalkeeper and Garcia was there to put the ball in the back of the net and send the Lobos (13-5-2) to the Mountain West tournament championship game Saturday against No. 4 San Jose State, a 4-3 winner over top-seeded Boise State in a shootout Thursday.

“To have a freshman step up and go put that away is really cool,” Dyche said.

In the game, UNM grabbed the lead in the 34th minute on the fourth goal of the season by Jill Olguin, who scored on a flip-throw ball sent in from Jessica Nelson. Wyoming notched the equalizing goal in the 79th minute.

“We are going to try find some energy and stay off of our legs,” said Coach Dyche on preparing for the championship game. “We did this last year and it’s difficult, so hopefully we can find a little bit extra in the tank and our roster is quite a bit deeper this year so we are ready. We will give it a go.”