The Mountain West Conference caucuses are over.
The time for teams to put in their applications for first-place candidacy has come and gone.
It’s here — the penultimate peak in the 16-game league season — the MWC summit, where a regular-season leader will, in all likelihood, be decidedly anointed.
The candidates have been narrowed down.
This is No. 10 UNM men’s basketball team against No. 13 BYU in Provo, Utah — the incumbent first-place Lobos against the running-for-office Cougars, two of last year’s tri-appointees (along with Utah) who shared the MWC regular-season title.
This is arguably the biggest game in the 10-year history of the MWC, spotlighting a battle of the league’s highest-ranked teams since the MWC’s inception.
This is, well — let’s leave it to senior forward Roman Martinez to explain.
“The way it’s turned out is incredible,” Martinez said. “Both teams have two losses. When’s the last time that happened? It’s been a great year. We’re going to keep on refusing to lose.”
Up for grabs are rights to the MWC regular-season throne.
BYU enters Saturday’s game a half game back of the Lobos for first place in the conference as the season draws to a close. A win would put BYU a half game ahead of the Lobos, pending the results of its final two games against Utah and TCU. For the Lobos, a win over the Cougars would solidify the regular-season crown, given they closed the season with a win over TCU.
Still, Alford disagrees.
“A championship is not going to be necessarily won or lost on Saturday,” he said. “As far as controlling our own destiny, we need Saturday’s game. It’s not a game we go into telling our guys that we have to be super human. Do we have to play well? Yeah. And we’re going have to do a lot of good things well to give ourselves a chance in that last five minutes to steal a victory.”
To make matters worse, the Lobos will have to do all this in the inhospitable confines of the Marriott Center, a place UNM hasn’t won at since 2000 — a streak spanning nine games.
Meanwhile, the Cougars — 26-3 overall, 11-2 in the MWC — after swiftly disposing of San Diego State on Wednesday, 82-68, have reeled off four consecutive wins, whereas the Lobos enter on a 12-game league winning streak — tied for longest
history in conference history with Utah (2004-05).
In that stretch, the Lobos stormed to résumé-building victories over UNLV in Las Vegas and then another home win against the Cougars, edging by 76-72.
The Lobos, however, staged less-than-assertive triumphs against MWC opponents Air Force and Colorado State — teams where simply showing up almost guaranteed the Lobos a prize. Instead, UNM unconvincingly eked out wins 59-56 over the Falcons and 72-66 against the lowly Rams — a fact that doesn’t have Alford the least bit concerned.
Implications aside, judging by how furiously competitive the last contest was in The Pit, this figures to be a topsy-turvy, state-of-the-conference affray, Alford said.
The question is: Can the Lobos effectively enact a game plan to lock down on BYU’s Jimmer Fredette, who is averaging 21.7 points per game and five assists? Can the Cougars enact a plan to circumvent Darington Hobson’s versatility?
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All good questions.
Alford said the answer isn’t strictly stunting Fredette so much as it’s not allowing Tyler Haws (11.7 ppg) and Jackson Emery (12.4) to score in double-figures.
“Holding them down in their building is going to be really difficult,” Alford said.
Going in the Lobos favor, Alford said, is playing in season-ending boilermakers are less stressful, since UNM is almost certainly an NCAA Tournament shoo-in.
Still, it took a lot to get to this point, where UNM stands today.
And Alford got introspective when asked to reminisce on the three-year journey — the path by which UNM transformed itself from a dysfunctional, disjointed last-place MWC program, in 2006, into what it is today.
“When I arrived, I was trying to get used to altitude, trying to get used to red and green chile and trying to get used to the whole Christmas thing,” said Alford, noting he could have never expected to be in the position he is today. “And then I got that guy J.R. Giddens. I knew he looked like a million bucks, so I’m thinking about how he’s going to be a part of it and everybody’s telling me he can’t be a part of it.”
The back story, of course, goes that the Lobos finished third Alford’s first year, the first in what has become a string of top 3 finishes. Alford reared Giddens from pretentious and pampered him into a first-round NBA draft pick.
Now, three years later, after sharing a regular-season championship last season, the Lobos are on the cusp of repeating as regular-season champs — this time outright. No sharing.
“Everybody talks about outright,” Alford said. “I won a Big Ten title as a player in ’87 and I shared that. I still have a ring that says Big Ten champion on it. Last year we shared it with two teams and the guys still have a ring that says Mountain West Conference champions. I don’t care if it’s shared or outright. You go through a two-and-a-half-month league battle — if at the end you stand on that pedestal and you’re atop everybody, that’s something special. We’ll take a league championship if we can tie eight teams.”
