From reading the tea leaves of the last five games, the UNM women’s basketball team (14-9, 6-5 MWC) should walk away from Wyoming with a win.
Over the last five games, at home, the Lobos have lost to teams with worse records than them — with the exception of a win over TCU — and beat teams on the road which were ranked above or equal to them in the Mountain West Conference. The Lobos boasted wins against TCU, BYU and San Diego State, two of which were on the road, in a three-game stretch and then lost to Utah and UNLV at home.
Entering Wednesday’s game, Wyoming — tied with the Lobos for third place in the MWC — fits this description.
But the dynamics of today’s game against the Pokes (15-8 overall, 6-5 Mountain West Conference) have changed.
One, Wyoming boasts the best home winning record (10-1) in the MWC. Two, point guard Amy Beggin will not play for the second game in a row. She suffered a head injury against UNLV and won’t be ready to play until Saturday.
Without Beggin, Georonika Jackson will start at the point guard position.
“I think we are OK,” said head coach Don Flanagan. “We didn’t turn the ball over very many times against Utah without Amy in there. Defensively was my only concern. We don’t get quite the pressure on the ball, but, in the mean time, I thought those players did an adequate job of being the point guard and taking care of the ball.”
The Lobos turned the ball over 13 times in their 52-49 loss to Utah on Saturday, a shade above their season average.
But the Lobos need to be more concerned with their shooting percentage, Flanagan said.
“It’s all about shooting percentage,” he said. “Last time against Wyoming we shot 48 percent in the first half, 48 percent in the second half and 50 percent from the 3. If we shoot 40, we beat people. If we shoot 30, we have a tough game.”
In fact, the Lobos have won all four MWC games when shooting above 39 percent. And they have a MWC record of 2-5 when shooting below that number. Strangely enough, the two MWC games they won when shooting under 39 percent were against conference-leaders TCU and BYU.
To counteract this, Flanagan has told his hot players to shoot, and his cold players to get the ball inside.
“I’ve told a couple of them to shoot a little bit more,” Flanagan said. “If somebody has a good shooting percentage, especially recently, we have encouraged those players to get those shots off. More aggressive play is the key. We want to get inside. And it appears to me when we shoot 25 or more 3s, we shoot a poor percentage. We have to get it inside with either a drive or with passes inside. And our inside players hit their shots.”
Even without Beggin, Flanagan is upbeat about the Lobos chances, especially after a rousing practice before the team’s departure to Wyoming.
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“We had a good practice today, one of the better practices we have had in quite a long time,” Flanagan said. “I am encouraged by that and how hard we played. Amy was sitting there watching and said, ‘Gee, we should have played that hard against Utah’ … Everybody is working hard. Everybody wants to get back on the winning ways.”
