by Phil Parker
Daily Lobo
The fans are frustrated, and the team is baffled. How can the Lobos be so good at home, but lose all their games on the road?
"Honestly I don't know," guard Troy Devries said after the team's easy home win over CSU. "We have to bring energy and effort and communication to the table. We're going to have to learn to do that our next road game."
Road woes have become more than a trend for UNM - losing away from home is a serious problem. With their ultra-talented transfers, along with a well-rounded total lineup, the Lobos have the talent to compete for a league championship.
David Chiotti gives the team an inside presence that many other teams lack. Devries and Javin Tindall can be killers from the outside, and Danny Granger has shown he can do anything, be it score from the outside, slash to the hole or post up overmatched defenders on the low block.
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Combine the all-around talent from the starters with punch from the bench, led by sparkplug Lenny Miles, and it's clear this team should be able to handle itself well, whether in The Pit or anywhere else.
Head coach Ritchie McKay said there just doesn't seem to be an explanation, but he has a good guess.
"We watch tape after tape," he said. "There's 18,000 people that cheer for us at home, that encourage us to get defensive stops. If we're ever going to break that road streak, we've got to do it on the road."
They've got to get stops. The team's first Mountain West Conference game was a loss at Wyoming, in a game in which it managed to get within three points in the last five minutes. If the Lobos had stopped the Cowboy offense, the game would have been theirs, but the Lobos couldn't rally.
Neither could UNM rally from a 20-point first half deficit at UNLV, despite closing the gap to just five early in the second half. Again, defense was the problem.
The Lobos were winning through one half at San Diego State early last week, but the defense folded shortly after intermission and the Lobos fell behind for good just minutes into the second half.
In this wide-open conference, winning at home is vital, but winning on the road will set the contenders apart. On Saturday, all four MWC games were won by the home team. Thanks mainly to parity in the conference, the Lobos are still in the thick of a race for second place. Five teams, including UNM, are 3-4 in the MWC. Air Force is the clear No. 1 right now at 6-1, but at 5-2, Utah is only two games ahead of the third-place traffic jam.
There's seven games left on the schedule - four on the road. If the Lobos can just bottle some Pit magic and take it out with them, who know how this season will end.
