The two Mountain West regular season champs squared off Saturday for conference supremacy — and it wasn’t close until the very end.
The men’s basketball team made 12-of-18 free throws in the last 2:44 of the game to hold on to a 68-59 win over No. 18 San Diego State to earn its second ever Mountain West Conference tournament title.
“To play the two teams we had to play back-to-back, and an Air Force team that was loose, getting better and better, we’re ecstatic about the quality of basketball we played over the last three days,” head coach Steve Alford said.
The Lobos showed no ill-effect from Friday night’s comeback semifinal win against UNLV as they ran out to a 15-4 lead to start the game and never let go of it.
Sophomore guard Tony Snell continued his offensive onslaught with eight quick points in that stretch. He finished the half and the game with 14 points off of 5-of-6 shooting, including 4-of-5 from 3-point range.
“We recruited Tony Snell,” Aztecs’ head coach Steve Fisher said. “He set the tenor for them with those early hard shots. He was very good.”
The Lobos led at the half 34-23 and led by as many as 14 points in the period.
In the second half, the Lobos didn’t miss a beat.
UNM kept shooting and the shots kept falling as senior guard Phillip McDonald’s layup with 6:34 left in the game gave the Lobos a 53-36 lead, the largest of the game.
The Aztecs put together one last stand with a 14-6 run to cut the lead to single-digits after a Jamaal Franklin layup made it 59-50 with 2:02 left.
And then the Lobos’ clutch free throws allowed many of the 12,168 fans at the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nev. to rush the court and celebrate with the champs.
UNM finished the game making 20-of-52 shots for 38.5 percent.
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The UNM bench outscored The Aztecs’ bench 22-12.
Freshman guard Hugh Greenwood tied a career-high 10 rebounds. He also scored six points.
“He’s such an unselfish player,” Alford said of Greenwood. “I wouldn’t trade that freshman for anybody in the league. He’s been the starting point guard on a team that’s been 27 -6, won two titles. For a freshman, he does some unbelievable things on the defensive end.”
Three Lobos finished in double-figures.
Sophomore Kendall Williams and Snell each scored 14 points.
Senior Drew Gordon, who was named Most Valuable Player of the tournament, recorded his 17th double-double of the season with 12 points and 12 rebounds.
Franklin, the Mountain West Conference Player of the Year, scored 16 points for the Aztecs off of 6-of-14 from the field and recorded 10 rebounds.
Teammate Chase Tapley led all scorers with 25 points.
Gordon, Snell, Franklin, Tapley, and UNLV’s Mike Moser were selected as the All-Tournament team over the weekend.
Gordon said UNM is the best unranked team in the country.
“We were ranked earlier in the season and lost two straight after that,” Gordon said. “We’ve been flirting with the rankings for quite some time now. Hopefully this will help us out a little bit and boost our stock and our ratings.”
Both, UNM and San Diego State, are a lock to go dancing in the NCAA tournament, but the unranked Lobo team’s seed is likely to improve because of its performance over the weekend.
“We had the best record in the league,” Alford said. “We obviously feel like we deserve the best seed. (That) doesn’t mean one of the other teams can’t have an equal seed, but we’re definitely deserving of the best seed that’s handed out to the Mountain West Conference.”
