Want to gain confidence back after a two-game road skid?
How about a visit from eighth-place Colorado State?
On Saturday, the UNM women's basketball team handed the Rams their 11th Mountain West Conference loss, 78-56.
"Of course, we needed this one, obviously," head coach Don Flanagan said. "We needed, hopefully, a momentum creator."
UNM entered the contest in fourth place in the MWC with three games left - two of which are in Albuquerque.
Before mashing the Rams, the Lobos had a tough road trip, dropping two close games at San Diego State and TCU.
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"(We are) just happy to get a win in general," Amanda Adamson said.
UNM will be the fourth seed unless BYU wins out and the Lobos lose their last two games. If the Lobos end up as the fourth seed, they'll face Air Force, which will be the ninth seed no matter what.
The Lobos never trailed against the Rams, but CSU still made it tough for UNM with physical play and strategy.
"CSU is hard to play because they play so hard," Flanagan said. "They set so many screens and they play a little bit faster. It's almost borderline out of control coming off of some of those screens, and so that is hard to defend sometimes. I thought, under the circumstances, we did a decent job defending them."
But defense was hardly the issue for UNM, as the Lobos held CSU to 33.9 percent shooting from the field. The Lobos took limited transition play by the Rams. UNM led by only eight at the half, and at times during the first period, CSU made it difficult for the Lobos to pull away.
"I thought we turned the ball over too many times in the first half," Flanagan said. "It was nine times in the first half to four in the second half. We did a better job of (protecting the ball)."
Four Lobos scored in double figures.
Amy Beggin continued her outstanding junior year with 14 points, five assists and four steals. Senior Angela Hartill finished with 10 points and eight boards. Valerie Kast scored 10 points.
"Val got some decent minutes," Flanagan said. "But she fouled every time on defense. She can't do that. Offensively she did just fine."
Freshman Lauren Taylor tied her season-high with 11 points.
Taylor was 2-for-3 from beyond the arc and had eight straight points during a two-minute stretch in the second half.
"I was just trying to relax on my shot," Taylor said. "I wanted to be a threat from the outside to help out so (CSU) can't play harder on people like Amy or Amanda. When you have other threats and everyone on the team is stepping up, you can't focus on one or two people when everyone can score."
Women's basketball vs. Wyoming
Saturday, 2 p.m.
The Pit
