Lobo men thump Greyhounds
UNM pulls away in second half to beat Eastern New Mexico in its season opener
Paul Weir summed up Wednesday night’s seasonopening win in a rather obvious, matterof-fact summation of his team’s play in its 92-71 win over Division II Eastern New Mexico.
“It looked a lot like our first actual basketball game,” Weir said. “A lot of things that were a little ugly at times, but overall, the gist of what we were trying to get better defensively, become a better defensive team. I think we can all see the offensive talent here.”
The Lobos (1-0) are, in fact, a team of several newcomers who may have had plenty of practices together, but had never played an actual game together in front of fans until the ball was tipped Wednesday night in front of an announced crowd of 9,501 fans in Dreamstyle Arena - the Pit.
The Lobos’ starting lineup included wing Makuach Maluach, in his third season with the Lobos, forward Vance Jackson, the former UConn Huskie in his second season at UNM, center Carlton Bragg, in his first full season at UNM after joining the team halfway through the 2018-19 season, and two guards — J.J Caldwell playing his first game in nearly two years since leaving Texas A&M and JaQuan Lyle, who is closer to three years from his last competitive basketball game after transferring from Ohio State in the spring of 2017
and spending last season out with a torn Achilles tendon.
Lyle shined, scoring nine points on 4-of-6 shooting with 11 assists and four rebounds, while fellow newcomer Zane Martin, a transfer from Towson, scored 13 off the bench. Maluach led all scorers with 16 points on 5-of-7 shooting while Bragg had 13 points, six rebounds, two blocks and drew five fouls.
But the stat lines weren’t the important part of Wednesday night’s game.
“It felt amazing to finally get up and down and just do what you love to do again,” Lyle said of his long hiatus from the court. “… It was a blessing to finally do it again. I’m thankful I get to do it.”
But, make no mistake, there was plenty of rust. And there was the usual groans from fans watching yet another opposing team coming into the Pit and hit more 3-pointers in the first half than they normally hit in an entire game.
But there were also flashes of offensive excellence that have so many people again talking up the potential of this year’s team.
“That’s going to be a work in progress, probably through March — finding a way to juggle and merge all these offensive talents together,” Weir said. “I think we have a lot of potential based on that, but I don’t think we’re going to reach it unless we become a good defensive basketball team.”
That was debatable in the first half when the Greyhounds hit 6-of-12 3-pointers and stayed closer to the Lobos on the scoreboard than some fans expected, going to the break down 45-34.
On the other hand, the Lobos played a vanilla version of the defense they plan to utilize this season, starting Saturday when Cal State University Northridge visits the Pit.
“With the 3-point line going back (this season), we’ve made some adjustments to our defense on when to give some of those up given our lack of a shot blocking presence and given the fact that we’re trying to keep our guys out of foul trouble,” said Weir, alluding to the fact that sending more defenders deep on the perimeter opens up driving lanes gets players like Bragg in a bad position to stay out of foul trouble.
The Greyhounds hit just 2-of-12 from deep in the second half and finished the game shooting 37.3 percent overall. ENMU was led in scoring by Darius Sawyer’s 11 points off the bench.