Is the UNM women’s basketball team in the midst of an identity crisis?
Truthfully, the Lobos’ play is, at this point, utterly amorphous, and UNM has yet to form a composite personality this season.
In their losses, the Lobos (5-3) have been in a stream of consciousness disarray.
There have been bright spots, like, say, center Valerie Kast scoring 14 points in a 65-55 loss to Texas Tech.
But inconsistency has held UNM back, point guard Amy Beggin said.
Even Beggin, whom the Lobos normally rely on, hasn’t been 100 percent, though none of it is her fault.
She has been limited by a bothersome ankle injury, which once kept her out of the starting lineup on Nov. 27 against North Carolina A&T, snapping a 73-game starting streak.
Still, the Lobos have an opportunity to move toward having an identity epiphany when they travel to face Arizona, a team UNM’s split its previous 14 games against, including three losses in the last four contests between the two schools.
Perhaps, Beggin said, some of the troubles UNM’s had are equal parts not meshing and not having continuity in the starting lineup.
To date, Lobo coach Don Flanagan has gone with three different starting lineups in search of the right mix.
Because of an early season injury to Georonika Jackson, Flanagan started guard Lauren Taylor in her place during an exhibition game against Eastern New Mexico, and, thanks to a 20-point outburst in which Taylor didn’t miss a shot, she remained in the starting lineup.
Flanagan started forward Porche Torrance against Toledo. Besides Taylor and Amanda Best, nobody on the Lobos’ roster has started all eight games.
Whatever the case, Beggin said, the Lobos should be able to have success no matter who is on the floor.
“It’s different when you don’t have some players out there,” she said. “But, at the same time, we practice with each other every day. I don’t think it should be an excuse for things not going right, not clicking. I think we have enough talent on this team, enough leadership on this team, that we should be rolling no matter who’s out there.”
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To be fair, it’s still early enough in the season that UNM has time to deduce how to fix its glitches.
Uncharacteristically, the Lobos dropped a road game to Texas Tech, a team Flanagan said, before the game, wasn’t as prestigious a program as it had been about 10 years ago.
In that game, the baskets were hard to come by for UNM, and the team shot just 35 percent from the field.
Flanagan said UNM’s coping with a mental block, but nonetheless he is eternally optimistic the Lobos will rebound out of their shooting rut when they face the Wildcats.
“(We need to) visualize positive outcomes seeing your shot go in and then putting in repetition,” he said. “That doesn’t assure you of hitting your shots, but I think it’s more being confident every time you take a shot. We were talking about that in practice, too, because I don’t see that lack of confidence in practice. So, the conversion from practice to game — that’s the tough part to teach, but I think we’ll stop it. Either that, or it’ll be negative reinforcement — that means running.”
For the time being, Beggin said the Lobos can work on not letting early deficits affect their psyche.
“Well I think it’s something we need to get a little bit better at,” she said. “At New Mexico State, we showed a lot of it. We got down and we came right back at them. We didn’t do that last game at Tech. They got us down and we weren’t able to get back up. As a unit, just when people have us down, and we face some adversity, we need to just keep battling, keep fighting the whole time.”
