Men’s basketball vs. Washington
Saturday on CBS
SAN JOSE, Calif. — A.J. Hardeman’s jersey number about said it all — double zero.
Not that Will Brown did much better. The Lobos’ undersized forwards played timidly, and, as a result, Hardeman and Brown were outmatched and outmuscled in the paint, nearly resulting in one of the most improbable early upsets in the NCAA Tournament.
Eventually, the third-seeded UNM men’s basketball team pulled away from No. 14 Montana in unconvincing fashion 62-57 on Thursday at the HP Pavilion to advance to the second round where it will face No. 11 Washington on Saturday.
“This isn’t gymnastics,” said Lobo head coach Steve Alford, when asked about the Lobos’ not-so-dominant performance. “We don’t get (style) points for that. You put it in at one end, and you keep it out at the other. When we make a lot of shots, we look prettier.”
The Lobos led by as much as 14 with 12:43 remaining in the second half. The Grizz went on a 12-2 run to pull within four. Minutes later, Montana center Brian Qvale trimmed the deficit to 53-52. The Lobos went without a field goal for the last 6:44 seconds of the game, a number of free throws proving to be the difference.
Montana brutalized the Lobos on the interior, exposing their tissue-soft underbelly. The Grizz wasted little time feeding the ball into their 6-foot-11-inch center Qvale.
The lumbering Qvale slogged down court, positioning himself on the block. And the graceless, ham-fisted Qvale almost beat UNM by his lonesome, scoring a career-high 26 points and 13 rebounds.
He baited Lobo forward Hardeman into foul trouble early in the first half. Not that it mattered. Qvale bullied Hardeman and Brown, abusing them inside the paint with, virtually, the same up-and-under post maneuver. By halftime, he had 17 points.
“He was a man amongst boys in there for awhile,” said Montana head coach Wayne Tinkle. “We made it very clear to him this week that we were going to go to him that he needed to beg for the thing. He needed to continue to fight and post and scrap and claw. And if he didn’t do that, we were going to get blown out.”
To the contrary, the Grizz didn’t get blown out, even though their superstar Anthony Johnson struggled mightily from the field, missing his first 11 shot attempts. After hanging 42 points over Weber State’s head in the Big Sky Conference tournament championship — 34 coming in the second half — Johnson matched his season-low with six points on 1-of-12 shooting.
Worse, Johnson had a critical turnover with a minute left in the game. Down three, Johnson tried to penetrate the lane and create enough space for a pull-up jumper. Except Dairese Gary wasn’t having it. Gary stripped the ball, was fouled at the other end and hit a free throw, one of six he hit in the waning moments of the game.
“If he went past me, we had someone there to block his shot. I knew if I could keep him from getting to the basket, he was going to do a step-back and try to pull up on me,” Gary said. “It’s just about keeping my hand in his shooting pocket.”
Though Gary hounded him all night, Johnson said the defense he faced wasn’t anything he didn’t expect.
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“I just picked a bad day to have a bad shooting night,” he said. “You want to be put in that position where you’re going to be a hero or you’re going to take the heat.”
By sheer luck, though, Johnson avoided the hearth.
Fortunately for him, Qvale, who came in averaging 9.7 points, picked the best night to be assertive with the basketball.
Much of the focusing resting on Johnson, Alford said Qvale was free to roam in the middle.
“Most of our preparation was for (Johnson),” Alford said. “And then Qvale has a career night in the month of March.”
Still, suspect interior play might not be the most pressing issue facing UNM.
Midway through the first half, Darington Hobson tumbled violently to the hardwood. He was attended to by trainers, as Alford walked over to check on his most-prized player. Hobson ambled off the court, clutching his back. Hobson finished the rest of the game — in fact, notched his 14th double-double — but Alford said Hobson will have X-rays on his wrist.
