Wyoming shoots baskets, not blanks

It was simple: Wyoming had a much better offensive performance than the UNM women’s basketball team at The Pit on Saturday.
An early Lobo lead vaporized, and the Cowgirls outshot and outplayed the Lobos in a 63-53 win.

“We had poor shooting,” head coach Don Flanagan said. “We are getting halfway decent shots but we are not executing as well as we should be at this time of the year. We gave ourselves an opportunity to get in the game late by pressing, and then we did not block out several times.”

The Lobos found themselves spotted an early six-point lead after freshman Jasmine Patterson made three shots as part of her team-high 12 points, but that was the biggest lead the Lobos held.
Wyoming’s Hillary Carlson hit a foul shot to tie the score at 11, and Wyoming never looked back. The Cowgirls went on a 17-0 run midway through the first half.

But UNM fought back to go into halftime with only a five-point deficit.

Guard Amanda Best said the game just slipped away.

“Hopefully this will push us to play harder in the next game,” she said. “I am not going to look at this as a positive, but hopefully it can turn into one.”

Wyoming came out with the same intensity in the second half adding to its lead. Wyoming’s Aubrey Vandiver scored a game-high 24 points.

After shooting only 34 percent in the first half, the Lobos missed four of their first five shots in the second half, and it seemed as if nothing would fall for UNM.

“I think we are all pretty good shooters on our team, but when it comes to the game we are not mentally focused on them and we rush them,” Patterson said. “We need to keep our heads up when we are shooting.”

Wyoming was up by as much as 18 points. Only two UNM players scored in double figures, and the four upperclassmen starters totaled a combined 25 points.

“It’s pretty disappointing, and a lot of it was the older players,” Flanagan said. “My feeling is right now that I am getting pretty decent effort and execution from our freshmen and not getting it from our older players.”