1) Sport is rife with logical fallacies.
2) Don Flanagan.
Linguistically speaking, the above is an example of a non-sequitur.
Or in basketball terms, it’s called the UNM women’s basketball team.
Expounding on that notion — so the thinking went: The Lobos defeated three upper-echelon teams in the Mountain West Conference (BYU, TCU and San Diego State).
Therefore, they’ll beat UNLV, a sub-.500 record team.
Not so.
The Lobos have proven that chaos is not the absence of order; it’s only the natural, worldly order — at least in the MWC.
All the same, what Flanagan witnessed on Wednesday at The Pit defied everything conventional about wisdom, everything assumed about order.
The Lobo head coach must have felt that he was center stage in the Theatre of the Absurd.
“I just don’t understand this group,” he said.
He’s not alone. They’re simply inconceivable.
“I like to tell you, ‘I do,’ but I don’t understand any team that will not give 100 percent and play with confidence at home against a team they beat on the road,” Flanagan continued.
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The Lobos, looking like a shell of their former selves, shot a disproportionate amount of 3-pointers to 2-pointers (19 to 8) in the second half against UNLV.
It didn’t matter how many timeouts Flanagan burned, nor how he pleaded with his team during those timeouts.
And Flanagan, with his feet planted firmly on the floor, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came after a 10-point lead at half. It came after the Lobos outmassed three of the league’s upper class. What a gaffe.
And Flanagan puzzled and puzzled until his puzzler was sore. Then Flanagan thought of something he hadn’t before.
“You know it’s almost like — and I’m not sure, OK, because I couldn’t tell you right now — it appears to me that if they believe the other team is supposed to beat them, they’re up for that challenge,” Flanagan said. “But if they think the other team’s beneath them, they’re not going to give the same effort.”
Or perhaps, the reality of the matter is the Lobos are a good, but not great, team. They lack, Flanagan said, a consistent scorer.
“I really don’t have consistent players that I can depend on for a game,” he said. “They might have a great game, then an average game, then a poor game. And so I really don’t know who’s ready to play.”
With the MWC Tournament just around the corner, this is an inopportune time for regression.
With this loss, the Lobos have banished themselves to the outskirts of contending for a MWC regular-season title.
Still, as guard Amy Beggin alluded to on Wednesday — “whatever seed we get, we get” — UNM is content with that, banking on making a push for NCAA Tournament consideration by winning the preceding MWC Tournament in Las Vegas.
Right now, it’s realistically the only way they’ll make the NCAA Tournament.
According to RealtimeRPI.com, the Lobos are 51 in the Ratings Percentage Index, a measurement incorporated into determining which teams are given at-large bids come tournament time.
Note: This is, by no means, an exact science.
However, typically — although there are exceptions — the NCAA Selection Committee reserves the 32 at-large bids for teams ranked in the top 32 of the RPI standings.
Depending on which teams in the RPI’s top 32 earn automatic bids by winning their respective conference tournaments, a few at-large spots remain for teams not in the RPI’s top 32.
Even so, at this point, Lobos aren’t even a bubble team.
In order to be a part of the March Madness euphoria, the Lobos must avoid February Failures.
But, again, order is something that is apparently lacking in the Lobos’ vernacular.
