Lobos fall to Nevada, 68-54, in de facto ‘home’ opener in Texas
It has already been a long and exhausting season for the University of New Mexico men’s basketball team. On Thursday it got even worse.
The Lobos were beaten badly once again, this time 68-54 by Nevada in their de facto “home” opener at Lubbock Christian University’s Rip Griffin Center in Lubbock, Texas. UNM is slated to play each of its first four Mountain West Conference home games at the high school-sized facility in the wake of the New Mexico public health order that limits the size of gatherings.
Minus The Pit crowd to egg them on, the Lobos simply had no offensive punch against a Nevada defense that squeezed the life out of them. The Lobos shot just 30 percent for the game and were an atrocious 15-for-35 from the free throw line in what was one of their worst shooting performances of Paul Weir’s tenure as head coach.
UNM falls to 3-3 overall and 0-3 in league play. They’ve averaged just 53 points in Mountain West games, each of which have been decided by at least 14 points.
It wasn’t all bad in the early going. Makuach Maluach hit a 3-pointer in the game’s first minute, giving the Lobos a rare positive start courtesy an outside presence and a pair of turnovers at the other end. It didn’t last long as the senior small forward picked up two fouls in the first 140 seconds.
His early exit brought Keith McGee off the bench, his first appearance since an ankle injury in the first of two games last week at Boise State. It sparked a 9-2 start in which Nevada missed each of its first five 3-point attempts.
The Wolf Pack’s shooting woes continued into halftime as they missed 10 straight. Dating to their home loss to Air Force on Dec. 20, they’d gone just 2-for-34 from 3-point distance between that game and the first half of Thursday’s contest.
The shooting was even worse on UNM’s side. The Lobos were an anemic 25 percent in the first half. The game turned in the final eight minutes of that half as Nevada used a 23-8 run to open a 10-point lead.
The Lobos’ inability to find any consistency on offense kept the margin in the double-digit range for most of the opening segment of the second half. As soon as Nevada started draining 3-pointers, the game got out of hand.
Three of them in less than two minutes opened a 20-point lead and, for all intents and purposes, the game was over. The Lobos kept clanging missed free throws and turning the ball over. When they weren’t, they were usually getting caught in the Wolf Pack’s 2-3 zone that slowed the game down and forced a handful of ugly offensive possessions.
GAME NOTES
The teams will play again at 8 p.m. Saturday on the CBS Sports Network.