UNM forced Wyoming to commit costly errors en route to a 45-point win Saturday at The Pit.
The Lobos scored 38 points off of Wyoming's 23 turnovers and won 100-55.
UNM head coach Steve Alford said Saturday's performance was as good as it gets.
"Needless to say, I don't know if we can play much better," he said. "I thought we really put a lot of really good things together at both ends of the floor."
While forcing the 23 mistakes, UNM turned the ball over only seven times and had 22 assists.
The Lobos were dominant inside, scoring 48 points in the paint - something Alford said he was pleasantly surprised with.
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"We don't really have that many big bodies, and they've really been beating people up inside," he said. "I thought our bigs all did a tremendous job of just fighting the posts."
J.R. Giddens had an outstanding night, scoring a career-high 36 points on 15-of-24 shooting. He also chipped in 11 rebounds, six steals, three assists and the only Lobo block.
In addition to Giddens' monster game, Alford said he was pleased with the entire team's effort
"We had good balance," he said. "J.R. obviously was terrific. We were just really active defensively, and I thought that the job Jamaal (Smith) and Dairese (Gary) did on (Brandon) Ewing was a huge key to get us going early."
The Cowboys' Ewing came into Saturday's game as the No. 2 scorer in the Mountain West Conference, averaging 17.5 points per game.
However, UNM frustrated him on Saturday, limiting Ewing to six points on 1-of-9 shooting. The six points were a season-low, and he did not score a point in the second half.
In his last three games at The Pit, Ewing has scored just 13 points on 4-of-31 shooting, including 1-of-13 from 3-point range.
Smith - while teaming up with Gary to slow down Ewing - also played well offensively, going 5-of-5 from the field and 3-of-3 from 3-point range for 13 points.
Smith said he prepared more for defense in Saturday's game.
"I really wasn't focused on offense," he said. "My main goal was just to make every shot (Ewing) wanted hard to get. You can't give a good player like that any easy buckets, because he'll take it and run with it."
UNM showed a lot of balance in the win, with every player scoring and playing at least 10 minutes.
Saturday's game was the second-straight win of at least 40 points for the Lobos, who handled CSU 91-51 on Tuesday at The Pit.
But despite the consecutive blowouts, UNM has no room to relax, Smith said.
"The next game is always the biggest game," he said. "We have no choice but to keep up this intensity. We want to do something special at the end of the year, and the time to do it is now."
Men's basketball at San Diego State
Wednesday, 9 p.m.
San Diego




