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Gimped Aggies lose again

Call it a tale of two cities.

Last week in Las Cruces, New Mexico State had its head coach, its best player who scored 32 points, and the Aggies’ bench, which was hot en route to a thrilling overtime loss.

In Albuquerque, NMSU’s head coach Marvin Menzies was absent to attend his father’s funeral, and Troy Gillenwater scored three points and watched most of the game from the bench because of injury.
The result: UNM controlled the game in a 78-62 blowout win Saturday night at The Pit.

“We obviously had heavy focus on (Gillenwater), and I thought our guys did a good job adjusting kind of in the flow of the game plan,” head coach Steve Alford said. “We had to adjust a little bit on how we were going to guard ball screens and how we might trap to do some things to get the ball out of his hands.”

The Lobos’ seventh win against their rivals was initially hard to come by. The 2-7 Aggies answered every time UNM scored. But the game quickly changed.

With 14:09 left to play in the first half, Gillenwater landed oddly on his right ankle after a missed 3-point attempt. He limped to the bench during an Aggie timeout.

Minutes later, Gillenwater was back on the court trying to play through the pain, but NMSU’s top scorer posted a 3-pointer, his only points of the night.

Taking advantage of a gimpy Gillenwater, the Lobos went on a 7-0 run, including three transition dunks, two off Gillenwater miscues, that stirred the 15,330 fans packed in the Pit.

The Aggies called timeout and Gillenwater sat on the bench with an ice pack wrapped around his right ankle the rest of the game. UNM controlled the tempo for the rest of the night.

Without its lead scorer, freshman guard Christian Kabongo’s 21 points and Hamidu Rahman’s first career double-double led the Aggies (17 rebounds, 14 points), but it was not enough to overcome the three-headed beast of Kendall Williams, Dairese Gary and Phillip McDonald.

“It feels good,” said Gary, who led the Lobos with 16 points and eight assists. “This is the last time I play them in The Pit, and it’s a big-time win for us.”

The trio took advantage and used their quickness to create open drives to the basket. Forward A.J Hardeman joined the three in double digits. Gary, McDonald and Hardeman had 10 points, and Williams put up 15.
Emmanuel Negedu had 10 rebounds and nine points, contributing to a dominating 48-31 rebounding advantage for UNM. The Lobos lost the rebounding edge in Las Cruces by five.

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“They pretty much beat us up on the boards bad (in Cruces) and we talked about it a lot,” Gary said. “We put bodies on people and went and got the ball.”

The Lobos briefly gave up the lead in the second half, 46-45, then went on a 13-0 run, propelled by Williams running the point position with mostly bench players.

“To get to this stage, to be 7-1 and to get two wins over New Mexico State, that’s always a big thing for us,” Alford said. “I’m really proud of our effort.”

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