The Lobos won this game for Devon Williams.
Following New Mexico’s 75-51 victory over Loyola-Chicago in the Mountain West-Missouri Valley Challenge, head coach Craig Neal said Williams will not play basketball again after it was discovered he has congenital spinal stenosis.
“Today was a really hard day,” a choked-up Neal said in his postgame press conference. “Wow. It was probably the hardest day I’ve had in a long time, telling one of your sons or telling one of your kids he can’t play the game they love.”
Williams went down midway through the second half in Sunday’s victory at NMSU with a neck injury. The injury did not cause the congential spinal stenosis, or a narrowing of the spinal column, but doctors discovered it later and advised Williams to not play again, Neal said.
It is the same condition that ended the football career for offensive lineman Toye Adewon this season.
“I gotta give my guys a lot of credit for being mentally tough and really resilient,” Neal said. “Playing the way they did to honor him was amazing. That’s what our program is about.”
Williams will continue his education and graduate in the spring, Neal said, with graduate classes coming next fall.
Forward Tim Williams, Wednesday’s leading scorer with 22 points, called it an emotional game. The players wrote “D-Will” on the bottom of their shoes, he said, to represent him.
“That was hard for us, but we came together and got a big win for him,” Tim Williams said.
UNM had little difficulty with Loyola through the first half. After exchanging the first 10 points with the Ramblers, the Lobos broke through with an 11-0 run that spanned 3:20. Forward Tim Williams scored four points during the spurt, including one bucket on a rebound putback.
The Lobos also closed out the half with a 7-2 run, holding Loyola-Chicago scoreless over the last 1:46 before the break.
For much of the half Loyola’s zone defense put a heavy emphasis on the UNM guards, especially the two top scorers Cullen Neal and Elijah Brown. That opened up buckets down low. The Lobos dumped 22 points in the low post, more than half of its offensive output through the first 20 minutes.
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Williams benefitted the most, scoring 13 points by converting six of his eight shots from the field. He finished with 22 points and seven rebounds for the game, becoming the third different leading scorer in the first three games. The previous two leading scorers, guards Cullen Neal and Elijah Brown, did not crack into double figures with nine and six points, respectively.
Forward Sam Logwood did. His 12 points put him in double-digit scoring for the first time this season. He previously scored five against Texas Southern and nine against New Mexico State.
Center Obij Aget also fared well down low with an eight-point, eight-rebound effort.
The Lobos’ offense continued its firepower into the second half, scoring another 37 points. The shooting percentage also went up to 65 percent (13 of 20) in the later half after firing a 59.3 percent clip in the first half (16 of 27). That averaged to 61.7 percent for the game.
New Mexico has won every game it has played in the Mountain West-Missouri Valley Challenge. UNM’s other Mountain West-Missouri Challenges wins are 66-61 over Creighton in 2009, 74-59 over Southern Illinois in 2010, 76-60 over Missouri State in 2011, and 77-68 over Indiana State in 2012.
So far in this year’s edition of the challenge, the Mountain West boast a three-games-to-two edge on the Missouri Valley with San Diego State topping Illinois State 71-60 and Colorado State beating Northern Iowa 84-78. The MVC has Southern Illinois with a 77-75 win on Air Force and Indiana State with a 70-55 victory on Wyoming.
Five games remain on the challenge’s docket: Utah State at Missouri State, UNLV at Wichita State, Drake at Nevada, Bradley at Boise State, and Evansville at Fresno State.
J.R. Oppenheim is the managing editor for the Daily Lobo. Contact him at managingeditor@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @JROppenheim.
