How big was the UNM men’s basketball team’s win against No. 3 BYU?
Try gigantic.
UNM’s 82-64 victory Wednesday in Provo, Utah, dampened the Cougars’ now-slim chances for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, and for the time being, didn’t allow them to clinch the Mountain West Conference regular-season championship.
It also put the Lobos back in NCAA tournament bubble talk.
Head coach Steve Alford said he isn’t worried about who is and isn’t on the bubble.
“We have no idea because we take it one game at a time,” he said. “The guys are laughing because I told them for three weeks that everybody talks about the NCAA tournament and bubbles. That thing changes by the hour, because teams lose and teams win. I just told them, ‘Hey, there are going to be teams in the country that get hot at the right time.’”
The Cougars were without their third-leading scorer Brandon Davies, who was dismissed from the team for violating BYU’s code of conduct. But it might not have mattered, since the Lobos hit their shots at the Marriott Center.
The Lobos made 44.6 percent of their shots while the Cougars shot 34 percent for the game.
Alford said basketball is simple; it’s about scoring.
“If you look at UNLV, that (came down to) the last play of the game, and if you look at Wyoming, that’s the last play of the game,” Alford said. “The guys have played well. It’s just about when you make shots. It makes things a little bit easier, and we made shots so it didn’t have to come down to the wire.”
Guard Phillip McDonald’s
performance against the Cougars should at least give him a shot at earning an MWC Player of the Week award. The junior guard made 9-of-14 field goals and drained five 3-pointers. He led all UNM scorers with 26 points.
McDonald said the reason UNM earned its fourth straight victory over BYU was because of something else.
“We did a good job of preparing for this game, and I think that’s why we shocked them a little bit,” he said. “But I felt very confident, and I’ve been working on my shot, and I was ready to go. I was being a lot more aggressive than usual.”
The Lobos play their last home game of the season against Air Force, and it will be point guard Dairese Gary’s senior night.
Leading up to BYU, Gary was a key component in Lobo victories.
Against TCU he scored 32 points, 23 during the final 9:33. He didn’t make a field goal against BYU, but played stellar defense.
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Gary, the all-time MWC assists leader, said Saturday’s game will be surreal for him.
“I think it’s going to be an emotional night,” he said. “I mean, it’s my last game in The Pit. I keep saying that I’m starting to feel like Ro (Martinez), because he was talking to me about this. This is all coming back and starting to feel like déjà vu a little bit.”
