At close range, UNM is far from good
New Mexico has had plenty of trouble when working under basket
Live by the 3, die by the 3 is the hoops cliché that seems to get a lot of traction around teams like the UNM Lobos, whose offensive bread and butter is all about hitting shots from beyond the arc.
In fact, head coach Paul Weir, a believer in the “more 3s, the better” approach, has twice in the past week referenced San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich’s disdain for the 3-point shot.
It’s not that Weir agrees. It’s that Popovich’s dislike for the shot is essentially summed up as bad for the game because, despite all the best strategy, games almost always come down to the team that is better at 3s wins.
But that mentality assumes both teams are at least adequate at the 2-point shot, which the Lobos, quite frankly, have not been of late.
In Tuesday’s 78-75 home loss to Colorado, the Lobos (4-4) hit 10 3-pointers to just five by the winning Buffaloes (8-1). But the Lobos also missed 11 layups or dunks, saw their shots blocked near the rim six times and couldn’t draw many fouls when they did try to score around the basket. That’s something even poor-shooting teams are usually eventually rewarded with — if they attack the rim as often as the Lobos tried to do Tuesday.
“Unfortunately layups and free throws,” Weir said when asked what the message was to his team after the game. “You’re not going to win very many games when the free throw count is 32 (attempts for CU) to 14 (attempts for UNM). I thought we did a really good job of getting the ball inside. I really liked that. We just couldn’t get one down there — couldn’t get a layup to go down, couldn’t get a foul to get called.
“I thought we threw it in more than they did. I thought we went to the rim more than they did. But they happened to get calls tonight. They happened to get those things. I’m not here to say anything about the officiating. I’m sure it was terrific. But they just seemed to get to the free throw line every time they went to the rim. And every time we went to the rim, it just turned into a blocked shot or a missed shot.” It wasn’t just Tuesday, either. On the season, the Lobos rank 348th out of 353 Division I teams in terms of what percentage of its scoring comes from 2-pointers. UNM gets 39.4 percent of its points on baskets inside the arc. The national average is 49.6 percent.
UNM ranks 53rd in 3-point scoring distribution (38.0 percent of it is from the long ball, well above the national average of 31.4 percent) and ranks 54th in free throw scoring distribution (22.7 percent, with the national average being 19.0).
So, while the Lobos will never be a national leader under Weir, or even a top-half sort of team in
terms of relying on 2-point baskets, they have to be significantly better than they are now.
Against NMSU last week, the Lobos missed 12 layups or dunks, according to the official scorer. In the Saint Mary’s loss, it was another 12 misses on 24 attempts at the rim. Tuesday against Colorado, UNM was 9-of-20 on layups or dunks with eight of those misses coming in the second half (to go along with six other misses ruled as attempts in the paint, but not layups or dunks).
“It’s unfortunate,” Weir said. “We spend time on it — layups, the technique of layups, the fundamentals of layups, but clearly not enough because layups were the difference for us tonight. We got great looks at the rim throughout the second half. Right around the rim, layups, and we just couldn’t convert them, which is probably just as much coaching as it is anything else.”
He went on to point out when things were firing on all cylinders in the first half, and the Lobos led by as many as 17 points, “we really followed a game plan. You could see it. You could feel it. We were playing inside out. We were getting the ball in there.”
WHAT’S NEXT? The big question for Lobo fans is what now? At 4-4, what will the Lobos do from this point on?
Here is a look at the past four years of Lobos basketball with its record at the eight game point of the season and the record and win percentage after that: 2018-19: 4-4 / TBD 2017-18: 3-5 / 16-10 (.615) 2016-17: 5-3 / 12-11 (.522) 2015-16: 6-2 / 11-13 (.458) 2014-15: 5-3 / 10-13 (.435)