With two matches remaining in the regular season, the Lobos are still fighting for a first-round bye that would take them straight to the Mountain West Tournament quarterfinals.
On Saturday afternoon, the UNM men’s basketball will take on the Wyoming Cowboys, a team that the Lobos already defeated once this season.
“The ‘next ones’ are running out. We are sitting 9-7...lost two in a row,” said UNM head coach Craig Neal. “We’re looking forward to our trip to Wyoming.”
Both teams hold the same overall record of 16-12, but New Mexico’s 9-7 in-conference record has outpaced the 6-9 record of Wyoming in Mountain West play.
Neal said playing in Wyoming is a tough venue and gave credit to Cowboys’ head coach Allen Edwards for the style in which they play.
“Laramie is a tough place to play; they have a good team,” Neal said. “Allen (Edwards) has done a really good job with the team they have. They play uptempo, they are scoring 80 points a game.”
When the Cowboys visited WisePies Arena back on Jan. 21, Lobo guard Elijah Brown scored 33 points to carry his team to a 78-71 victory.
After the game, Brown said he was happy about the win but not too pleased with his performance, as he “missed too many shots.” He was a volume shooter that night, making 12-of-25 from the field, but his 33 points remain his
On Tuesday, Brown put up 20 points in a 68-56 loss to Colorado State. But the junior guard, who has gone 82.8 from the free throw line this season, didn’t get to the line once.
It was the first time in his Lobo collegiate career that he failed to attempt a single free attempt. And getting to the foul line has been one of New Mexico’s biggest strengths in term of scoring.
The Lobos have converted 526 free throws attempts this season, a 75.5 percentage. The team was ranked third in the country according to KenPom’s free throw rate.
Wyoming is also a good free throw shooting team, but have a slightly lower success rate at 73.4 percent. However, they have a sizable advantage over the Lobos when it comes to three-pointers.
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From beyond the arc, the Cowboys have averaged a little over nine successful 3-pointers per game—something that is not a strength for the Lobos, a team that hits a little less than five per game.
UNM struggled early in the season defending the deep ball as
Earlier this the week, Neal said that he’s seen improvement in his team’s overall defense, but now the focus is on getting a good rhythm for the offense.
The Lobos, still playing without senior forward Tim Williams, have had to rely on several other players to step up.
Neal said that the key to succeeding in the last two games of the regular season will be finding consistency from some of those players offensively.
“We have to figure out how to manufacture points, going forward that’s going to be the biggest thing for us,” the coach said. “I think we can get that from several people. They just have to play with a little bit more confidence.”
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.
