Snapped.
The UNM men’s basketball team’s four-game conference winning streak was halted Saturday in Fort Collins, Colorado.
The Lobos, plagued by a poor first-half shooting performance, fell to the Rams 68-62 for the first time in head coach Steve Alford’s UNM career.
Alford, who was 7-0 against the Rams, said UNM is just going through a phase where it simply can’t hit shots.
“That makes it hard on us,” he said. “We don’t have a big margin for error the way it is, and when you’re not making shots, it makes it even harder.”
The Lobos find themselves in fifth place in the Mountain West Conference, and CSU continues to hold on firmly to the No. 3 spot behind league-leaders San Diego State and BYU.
UNM and CSU traded baskets and the Rams had a 14-12 lead, but with 14:24 left in the first half, the Lobos went nine minutes without a basket.
During that stretch, the Rams went on a 15-0 run, and with 5:59 left in the half, CSU’s Andy Ogide drilled a free throw to give the Rams a 29-12 lead.
Ogide finished with a game-high 17 points and had a huge dunk with 3:58 left in the game to put the Rams up 61-55.
“We didn’t make shots again (Saturday), and it really hurt us in the first half,” Alford said. “But we really responded well and did a lot of good things in the second half.”
Down 36-22 at the half and by as much as 18 at one point, the Lobos rallied in the second period.
UNM’s Cameron Bairstow hit his first 3-pointer of the season with 43 seconds left that cut CSU’s lead to 63-60.
Down 66-62 with 14 seconds left, point guard Dairese Gary turned the ball over, and that sealed the game for the Rams.
“We came out kind of flat at the beginning, and we fought our way back,” Gary said. “But being down like that, especially being away from home, is tough to come back to a team like that. It was a tough game and the environment was pretty good.”
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Gary and guard Kendall Williams had 16 points each.
Williams said Saturday’s game was a tale of two halves.
“We dug ourselves a big hole,” he said. “We saw the real Lobos come out in the second half, but we can’t wait to turn it on like that. We’re too young. We have all the talent, but we can’t wait to turn that switch.”
It didn’t help that the Lobos made only 6-of-25 3-pointers to the Rams’ 9-of-21.
And when UNM made a second-half run, CSU senior Adam Nigon came up with clutch shots from beyond the arc. Nigon went 4-of-8 from 3-point range for 13 points.
Alford said the team needs to play more physically and with a greater sense of urgency.
“We have got to work on our toughness,” he said. “I think it’s most of our team. We’ve got to work on a lot of toughness things, because I think that’s what shooting is and just continue to practice very, very hard. We know that we have a very difficult week coming up.”
