The New Mexico Women’s Basketball team opened the new season the way that every team hopes to — with a win.
The Lobos defeated Division II Lubbock Christian University on Tuesday night at Dreamstyle Arena, 62-55. UNM fought through a bad shooting night that saw the team go 5-33 from three as well as 21 turnovers to beat the Lady Chaps.
“I think we played hard enough,” Head Coach Mike Bradbury said. “Defensively we did a really good job of, I’m not going to say following the plan, because we didn’t really prepare. We played our base defense, but we did that well. The only thing defensively we probably didn’t do well was rebound so that was a little disappointing.”
Bradbury seemed unconcerned with the team’s slow night offensively, particularly the performance of freshman Jayla Everett and Ahlise Hurst.
“Offensively, you guys are going to think I’m crazy. We played pretty good, we didn’t make any shots. If you told me Jayla and Ahlise were going to go 0-15 from three, I’m telling you both of those guys are over 40 percent three-point shooters.”
He attributed the performance of the freshmen to nerves as the duo played their first college game. A familiar face led the Lobos offensively, as Jaisa Nunn finished with 17 points and nine rebounds in 25 minutes of action. Nunn said that she enjoyed the extra help she got in the post tonight, as forwards Antonia Anderson and Nike McClure also played more than 20 minutes in the game.
“It was pretty nice, I actually got a little bit of rest time and could see what was happening on the floor, especially from the bench perspective, and that’s fine with me,” Nunn said. “We had some other players, we had Nike, we had (Anderson), we had Erica (Moore), we had (Shaiquel McGruder) killing the game in her minutes. I’m really proud of the post that we have. We’ve got a whole bunch of people now and I love it.”
McGruder led the freshman in points with eight, going 3-for-3 from the floor while the other four freshmen were a combined 0-for-21. Aisia Robertson, the highly anticipated transfer from Kansas made her debut in a Lobo uniform and scored 15 points, had five assists, three rebounds and two steals.
On the other side of the coin, she finished with seven turnovers, something that she attributed to it being early in the season, and the team still developing chemistry and getting used to playing at game speed.
“I think I could’ve made some better decisions with the ball, but for it being the first game back I think I did pretty decent,” Robertson said. “It’s definitely a game that I can learn from.”
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Despite their offensive woes, the Lobos lead for 32:32 of gametime. If the Lobos had been able to make their shots, they would have won by a much larger margin over the Lady Chaps. Maddi Chitsey led LCU with 13 points on the night, as the Lady Chaps suffered only their second loss against a Division I school in program history, with the other coming against UConn in 2016.
The Lobos will finish up exhibition play on Sunday at 2 p.m. against Eastern New Mexico, before the regular season begins on Friday, Nov. 9.
Cameron Goeldner is a sports beat reporter and photographer for the Daily Lobo. He primarily covers men’s soccer, women’s basketball, softball and the Albuquerque Isotopes, but also contributes content for baseball, basketball, football and track and field. He can be reached at sports@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @goeldfinger.
