Does the UNM basketball team deserve to be ranked among the top 25?
As the roller coaster season continues, I’m still uncertain — and I think the Lobos feel the same.
Tuesday night’s 71-63 loss to unranked Colorado State, one day after getting national attention and the No. 18 ranking in the Associated Press weekly poll, convinced me that I won’t know how good this team is until its final loss of the year.
I won’t know what kind of team head coach Steve Alford has assembled because every time it looks ready to make the step from good to great, the team falls on its face.
And Tuesday was no different.
The Lobos lost to a Rams team they beat at home by 32 points just last month.
Three days after making a statement on national television and crushing then-No. 11 UNLV at The Pit, the Lobos traveled to Fort Collins, Colo. and chucked their worst shooting percentage of conference play (36.7 percent).
And senior forward Drew Gordon was out-Gordon-ed.
Last week, nobody played at the level Gordon did, maybe in the entire country.
He took it to then-No. 13 San Diego State with a Herculean effort in the win, scoring 17 points and grabbing 17 rebounds.
Just when you thought he had played the best game of the season, he played the best game of his life.
His 27-point, 20-rebound performance against the Rebels on CBS three days later got NBA front offices talking.
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Colorado State forward Pierce Hornung upstaged Gordon at Moby Arena.
Hornung muscled UNM’s front court for 13 points and 15 rebounds — all Gordon did was tie his career-high in turnovers with six.
And that’s the kind of season it’s been for the Lobos.
Up and down.
UNM was picked as the preseason favorite to win the Mountain West, mainly for its depth of talent and new faces.
Gordon was named preseason player of the year and Hugh Greenwood preseason freshman of the year.
The Lobos slaughtered Davenport and Western New Mexico in the two exhibition games, winning by 38 and 31 points, respectively.
And in the first game that mattered, the opening game of the season in which the Lobos took on New Orleans, UNM won by 52.
All was good in Lobo land — and then the Aggies came to town.
The Lobos, who averaged 94.3 points per game in those first three games (against nobodies, granted) were shut down 62-53 at home and ended with 28.0 shooting percentage, the worst of any game thus far in the season.
Eight days later UNM lost again to Santa Clara in the ‘76 Classic, a tournament many picked the Lobos to win.
Fans started to doubt. My best friend heckled me for writing a column in which I claimed the Lobos would win 28 games.
Then the Lobos went on an unprecedented 13-game winning streak. The streak was the fourth longest in the country at the time, just behind Syracuse, Baylor and Murray State. The Lobos were on the verge of top-25 status.
And just like that, they fell to San Diego State at home and then to UNLV by 17.
Suddenly, UNM went back to mediocrity. It got lost in the middle of the conference standings and bordered on irrelevance.
Then Alford proposed a 13-day challenge to his team that sparked a seven-game win streak and earned the Lobos a national ranking — until Tuesday.
I don’t know what to expect from the Lobos anymore. They could win the rest of their games, the MWC tourney, grab a 3 to 5 seed in the NCAA tournament and maybe sneak into the Sweet 16.
Or they could lose another game before the conference tournament, fall short in the MWC tourney, settle for a 7 to 10 seed and lose in the first round of the NCAAs.
I just don’t know.
