The UNM men’s basketball team suffered a crushing blow to its NCAA Tournament hopes with a 81-61 road loss to the University of Wyoming Monday night.
The Lobos could not overcome a 15-point halftime deficit and the Cowboys’ lights-out shooting. UNM dropped to 6-6 in the Mountain West Conference and 17-9 overall, while Wyoming improves to 9-3 in conference play and 18-7 overall.
The Cowboys are now tied with the University of Utah for first place in the Mountain West, while the Lobos stay in fourth place, behind Brigham Young University. UNM faces BYU Thursday but cannot finish higher than its current fourth place position.
“Right now we just need to get back home and prepare for BYU,” UNM head coach Fran Fraschilla said during his post-game radio show.
Fraschilla added that he was disappointed with the short amount time the Lobos have to recover from what he called a respectable loss against one of the better conference teams that is a few wins short of top-25 status.
“Now, I normally don’t complain much, but BYU played Saturday night and has five days of rest, while we had to play a Monday night game that finished at midnight, which means we won’t get to Denver until 4:30 in the morning,” he said. “Frankly, it’s just not right — it’s just crap. The the guys have three days of school, which stinks, but we’ll focus on getting back to the classroom and hopefully find some time to practice.”
Following the BYU game, the Lobos face the University of Utah Saturday in their final regular season game.
While the best formula for an NCCA Tournament appearance is to win the Moutain West Conference Tournament Championship for the automatic bid, most analysts are predicting the conference will earn an additional at-large bid, making this a pivotal loss for the Lobos.
After a mid-season road drought, UNM was close to being on the NCAA Tournament bubble, which is made up of teams with a shot of making the Big Dance’s field of 65 teams. However, the Lobos needed to win the remainder of their games and make it to the conference tournament finals to have a comfortable shot at an at-large bid.
Wyoming’s balanced shooting effort, including an improbable 50 percent from the three-point line, compared with its regular 29 percent average, was too much for UNM to overcome. The Lobos did not help themselves and couldn’t score consistently, shooting 36.5 percent from the field. Their performance dredged up memories of the droughts they suffered during a five-game road losing skid that ended Saturday with a 54-51 win over Colorado State University.
“They shot extremely well from outside, and I thought that was really the difference in the game,” Fraschilla said. “I thought we sufficiently shut down the inside game and even though Josh Davis scored 20, he hit them mostly from the perimeter. With a team like that you, have to play them inside or outside but we can’t do both. They burned us from outside, and our shooting didn’t help.”
The Lobos flirted with comebacks in the second half, but could never get close enough to give the Cowboys a scare. An 11-0 run by Wyoming in first half and its consistent scoring, compared with UNM’s poor shooting, sealed the win for the Cowboys early.
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UNM outrebounded Wyoming 40-37, with the tally 14-5 on the offensive glass. Statistically, the game was a dead heat with the exception of the category that counts the most — shooting.
Wyoming senior guard Chris McMillian playing his last home game stole the show with 18 points. He was helped by an overwhelming effort by forward Josh Davis, who finished with 20 points, eight rebounds and three blocks.
The Lobos were led by point guard Marlon Parmer with 15 points but scored 13 of them in the first half. White scored 13 points, 11 coming in the second half.
Perenial Lobo scorers Ruben Douglas and Eric Chatfield disappeared for most of the game. Douglas finished with 10 points and Chatfield scored just two points for the second game in a row. The two guards combined for four-of-20 shooting from the field.
“Ruben didn’t have his best night and Eric didn’t play well either, so that made it almost impossible to stage a comeback,” Fraschilla said.
UNM got unlikely help from sharp-shooting guard Tim Lightfoot, who has been averaging a quiet eight points a game, but finished with 12.
“When you’re counting on Marlon to score and Tim to get on a shooting streak, you’re not likely to win because the team is not playing within its roles,” Fraschilla said. “We had no other choice than to try to get scoring from those two, but a lot of times we forced our offense out of frustration, but what’s done is done. Now we just need to stay focused on the next game and not what could have been.”
