With another game on the road came another loss for the University of New Mexico women’s basketball team.
Wednesday’s contest in Laramie, Wyoming was supposed to be a rebound for the Lobos (15-3, 3-2 MW) after they fell to a below .500 team in San Jose State over the weekend. Instead, a poor shooting effort—especially from long range—led to UNM’s demise, as they fell to the Cowgirls (10-5, 3-1 MW), 66-55, at Arena-Auditorium.
The Lobos’ shooting woes were in full effect against Wyoming, as they shot 35.4 percent from the field and hit only three of its 16 3-point attempts. The Cowgirls, on the other hand, shot a much better 43.6 percent from the field, while also nailing seven 3s in the game.
Despite the shooting struggles one Lobo was an outlier as far as scoring goes. Senior guard Cherise Beynon, on an 11-for-20 shooting night, scored a game-high 28 points on the road. Of the three made UNM shots from long range, she contributed two of them.
No other UNM player, besides freshman guard N’Dea Flye’s 10-point performance, scored in double figures. Freshman guard Madi Washington, who came off the bench, finished third in scoring for the Lobos with nine points.
Some of the Lobos’ better scorers in junior post Jaisa Nunn and senior guard Tesha Buck didn’t do so well on Wednesday night. Nunn scored only four points on a 2-for-10 shooting night, while Buck scored no points and went 0-for-7 from the floor, with five of those shots coming from long range.
Head coach Mike Bradbury said that he thought his team did a bunch of things right against Wyoming, though eventually poor shooting was his team’s kryptonite.
“I thought we defended, rebounded and ran our offense well—and we played hard enough,” he said, according to a UNM press release. “We just didn't shoot it well tonight. We got the shots we wanted—they just didn't fall.”
The Lobos found themselves down by as many as 16 points in the fourth quarter, but Beynon with 3:56 left, cut the lead to 60-53 after she nailed a 3-pointer. Senior guard Alex Lapeyrolerie tried to cut the lead to four points shortly after when she pulled up from beyond the arc, but the ball rimmed its way out of the hoop and into the hands of the Cowgirls, who nailed a 3-pointer of their own to grab a double figure lead—one that would never falter, as Wyoming went on to win at home.
Up next for UNM is a 2 p.m. home matchup this Saturday Jan. 13, as they host Fresno State.
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Matthew Narvaiz is a senior sports reporter for the Daily Lobo. He primarily covers men’s and women’s
basketball, and baseball. He can be reached at sports@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @matt_narvaiz.
