After seeing its coach fired with enthusiasm, Wyoming entered the Pit fired with enthusiasm.
Without head coach Heath
Schroyer, who was dismissed early in the week, the one-conference-win Cowboys gave the UNM men’s basketball team all it could handle. Too bad for the Pokes, it wasn’t enough, and the Lobos employed late-game, full-court press to close Wednesday’s contest, 68-57.
“The bigs were banging. The refs were letting it go,” UNM center Drew Gordon said. “It was basically just a matter of who was going to end up with the ball who wants to put the ball in the basket.”
Physically, UNM was too much down the stretch. Up three late in the game, the Lobos forced four straight turnovers, cashing in with three wide-open transition dunks. The Lobos improved to 17-7 and 5-4 in the Mountain West Conference.
For a half, Wyoming outplayed the Lobos. The Cowboys darted through screens, bumped through open lanes and frustrated UNM to take an early 11-7 first-half lead.
Wyoming’s Amath M’Baye headed to the bench midway through the first half having scored his team’s 11 points. He finished with 19 points, but the Lobos used that four-minute stretch to pull away. Down five, head coach Steve Alford called a timeout to calm his team, and after the break, Gordon led UNM’s surge.
On their first possession after the timeout, Dairese Gary found Gordon for a quick basket. Gordon finished with his seventh double-double, 16 points and 18 rebounds. It was the most rebounds by a Lobo in a regular-season game since Kenny Thomas did it in 1998.
“Everybody was playing in their spots, and my team was spacing well, running the offense and then boxing out, and the ball just kinda ended up in my hands,” Gordon said.
The first half had nine ties and 12 lead changes, and throughout the second half, it remained a seesaw affair.
UNM, working its transition game, found guard Tony Snell on multiple occasions for uncontested 3-point shots.
Growing comfortable being the Lobos’ deep threat, Snell hit his first three long-range attempts. He was 5-of-9 from beyond the arc and finished with 19 points.
“My confidence came back up,” Snell said. “At the beginning (of the season), I was kind of lost, but now that I know the system, my confidence is back, and I know what I have to do.”
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Despite Snell’s early play, the Lobos were still down with minutes left in the first half. Late in the half, Alford went to a five-guard set, and Gary took an inbound pass from guard Kendall Williams to mid-court, then hit Phillip McDonald who rushed the basket with a two-handed dunk to end an authoritative fast break.
The Lobos dominated the second half with heavy inside play from Gordon and kept the Cowboys on their heels with full-court pressure and light-speed transition offense.
“It was a good win for us,” Alford said. “Those are never easy. “In a night where we didn’t make a lot of shots, we found a way.”
