The UNM men's basketball team has its work cut out for it with three of its next four games being on the road.
But if the Lobos play anything like they did in consecutive blowout wins, they can quickly make up a lot of ground in the Mountain West Conference.
The next test comes tonight at San Diego State, which rallied from a 14-point deficit earlier this season to topple UNM 72-67 at The Pit.
UNM head coach Steve Alford said that loss will be on the Lobos' minds when they take on the Aztecs tonight.
"They're the one team that's gotten away from us at home," he said. "I know our guys are going to be energized and motivated and their guys are too, because there's only one game that separates the two teams right now."
After a two-game home stand in which UNM handled CSU 91-51 and Wyoming 100-55, the Lobos are 18-6 overall and 5-4 in the MWC.
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The Aztecs are coming off a 68-62 loss to TCU and are 16-7 overall and 6-3 in the conference.
San Diego State head coach Steve Fisher announced Monday that the team is suspending junior forward Kyle Spain for the rest of the season due to undisclosed violations of team policy. Spain was averaging 13.2 points and 5.4 rebounds per game.
Alford said that even though Spain is a talented player, the Aztecs shouldn't miss a beat because they have another solid forward in Kelvin Davis. Davis has averaged 9.5 points and 3.2 rebounds in 22 minutes per game this season.
Meanwhile, the Lobos rebounded nicely after double-digit road losses at BYU and UNLV, the top two teams in the conference. But now UNM must see if it can match its recent success on the road.
Alford said he doesn't expect his team to lack energy being away from The Pit.
"We've had it all year with the exception of BYU," he said. "I didn't think we had that at BYU. At UNLV, we had the intensity, we just got rocked early, and we didn't handle things very well."
After the losses to UNLV and BYU, a notable change Alford made was inserting freshman guard Jonathan Wills into the starting lineup for junior Chad Toppert.
Coming off the bench seemed to give Toppert and UNM a boost. Against CSU, Toppert scored a career-high 22 points.
In the win over Wyoming, he scored 18 points off the bench, shooting 5-of-6 from 3-point land, while Wills finished with eight points and eight assists.
Wills said the coaching staff made the change to shake things up after the road losses.
It has been a welcome change for him and Toppert, Wills said.
"He's a good force off the bench," he said. "He can score the ball nicely. But I think we complement each other well, so it works."
