There was a reason senior Mandi Moore came up four points shy of the 1,000-point milestone after the Lobos' 78-58 win over the San Diego State Aztecs on Thursday at The Pit.
"I don't really think about it that much," she said. "I missed some shots today, and I could have had it, but my family is coming into town on Saturday, and hopefully it'll happen then."
Moore's roommate Abbie Letz said the milestone is on Moore's mind more than she likes to admit.
"I asked her about it today, and she was like, 'Abbie you don't understand. I have to get it whenever I can. I haven't had the best of luck lately,'" Letz said.
Luck has been far from Moore's side the past several games. After she caught an inadvertent jab to the eye on Feb. 5 against Colorado State, she had to miss a game and wear a pair of protective glasses to shield the eye from any further blows.
The glasses ended up doing just the opposite when Moore was involved in a collision in a game against Brigham Young on Saturday. She ended up having to leave the game in order to close a cut that required six stitches above her other eye. Moore played only seven minutes against BYU.
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"I think I miss those glasses," she said. "I was stylin' in those. No, it's nice to get them off."
A glasses-free Moore ended up with four steals and six assists. Three of her steals came within the first five minutes of the game, helping the Lobos jump out to a 12-3 lead they never looked back from.
After UNM took a 32-15 lead into intermission, things started to look a lot like what Moore saw when she was wearing the glasses - tinted with a boring gray.
"I didn't have much fun out there," senior Lindsey Arndt said.
With a media timeout on its way in the second half, head coach Don Flanagan called his own 30-second timeout.
"That's an anger timeout," he said. "I wanted to get a point across to them. I wanted to make sure I made an impression on them."
Flanagan said he was angered by the team's lack of defense in the second half. That lack of defense allowed Michelle Elliott and Michelle Strawberry to score 12 points and nine points respectively. It infuriated Flanagan because Elliott was held to three points in the first half, while Strawberry was kept at six.
The Lobos still sit atop the Mountain West Conference. Although they're tied with Utah at 8-2, the Lobos hold the tiebreaker because they swept the season series against the Utes.
UNM faces the University of Nevada-Las Vegas on Saturday at 2 p.m. in The Pit.
