The UNM men’s basketball team is looking for improvement on its second road trip of the season as it takes on Illinois State in the Mountain West/Missouri Valley Challenge Saturday evening.
New Mexico (5-2) is 4-0 when playing at WisePies Arena, aka the Pit. But last week, in its first action on the road, the team wasn’t as fortunate, going 1-2 in the Wooden Legacy tournament in California.
The Lobos redeemed themselves with a 64-55 victory over the Abilene Christian Wildcats (3-3) Wednesday night in the 50th anniversary of the first game played at WisePies Arena/the Pit.
Although the Lobos got the win, head coach Craig Neal admitted that after the game, he wasn’t too thrilled with his team’s performance. However, he seemed to focus on some of the positives after watching the tape.
“We did some good things. We did a lot better things defensively than I thought we did,” he said. “I think my frustration, or not thinking that we played as well as we did, is because we weren’t able to score the ball. But if you look at our team, 31 points of our scoring were out.”
Neal was referring to the absence of two of the team’s key players. Tim Williams had his streak of scoring in double digits snapped due to injury, playing just 16 minutes after he was struck in the neck in the early moments of the game. He had scored 10+ points in all six of the previous games, but Neal decided to sit Williams, who ended the night with eight points.
The other piece of missing offense was Sam Logwood, who didn’t play at all. Logwood suffered an apparent injury to his right quadricep last Sunday.
Still, three Lobos scored in double figures against Abilene Christian: Elijah Brown scored 13, Obij Aget had 12 and Xavier Adams chipped in 10.
New Mexico benefited from turnovers as they scored 21 points off 14 Wildcat turnovers. However, just a few days earlier, the Lobos felt the sting of being on the other side of that statistic.
Last Sunday, during its final game of the Wooden Legacy, the team fell to Dayton, 64-57. The Flyers victimized the Lobos, turning 16 turnovers into 25 points.
Neal said he was happy to see the improvement on Wednesday, and wants to see even more on Saturday.
“We ran the offense, we moved the ball and when we do that...we don’t turn it over as much,” he said. “Hopefully we can get easier baskets. I think the turnover situation kind of correlates to the score. The higher the score, the higher the turnovers you are going to have, that’s just my opinion.”
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Illinois State holds a 3-2 record, but the team is undefeated at home. The Redbirds are coming off back-to-back 14 point wins.
The most recent victory came over IUPUI 81-67 on Friday. For the season, Illinois State is averaging 74.8 points per game, while allowing opponents 68.
“Three starters back, two kids from junior college, that are starting for them,” Neal said. ”It will be a tough contest for us, just because we don’t know what is going on with our health.”
The Lobos have averaged more points per game, but are giving them up at a higher clip, too. UNM is scoring 78 points per contest and giving up 72.6.
Williams and Logwood did not practice on Thursday, and it is still uncertain whether or not they will be available on Saturday.
Neal said a key to success against the Redbirds will be for the Lobos to take care of the ball.
“We’ll have to go in there and play good defense. We can’t turn the ball over and we have to get a shot on goal every time,” he said. “It will be a tough challenge for us, but we need it and we are looking forward to it.”
The game is scheduled for 6 p.m. and will broadcast on ESPN3.
Isabel Gonzalez is a sports reporter for the Daily Lobo. She mainly covers men’s soccer and basketball. She can be reached at sports @dailylobo.com or on Twitter @cisabelg.
