Three-game losing streaks. One was snapped on Saturday afternoon, but New Mexico now owns one after an 82-71 loss at Wyoming.
The win for the Cowboys (17-12, 7-9 Mountain West) put them back into the win column, while New Mexico (16-13, 9-8 MW) fell 5-7 on the road.
“I thought we played really, really hard,” UNM head coach Craig Neal said in a release. “We got it down to a one-possession game, but we made two bad mistakes on defense. Instead of keeping our poise, I thought we tried to come back down and hit home runs.”
The Cowboys were hot-handed from beyond the arc, making a total of 14 3-pointers with a 48.3 success rate. The Lobos hoisted 20 attempts, but only made three of them.
Wyoming outperformed the Lobos by nearly 10 percentage points in field goal shooting, while the Lobos converted just under 40 percent of their shots.
Each side had four players end the game with double-digit scoring performances. Wyoming was led by James Justin’s 22 points, marking the eighth time the sophomore guard has scored at least 20 this season.
New Mexico, meanwhile, saw an unusual scoring leader in redshirt sophomore Connor MacDougall, who put up 17 points in just 15 minutes of playing time. He accomplished the feat by going 4-of-6 from the field, and 9-of-12 from the free throw line.
Another player who impressed from the bench for New Mexico was sophomore guard Anthony Mathis, who played 16 minutes and collected 13 points, the second-most for the Lobos on Saturday.
The ESPN3 television commentators joked that UNM may have found an M&M duo, referring to the combination of Mathis and MacDougall.
The Lobos started the game on the wrong foot, committing five fouls and going down 9-0 in the first four minutes of the game.
However, they pulled it together and by the 7:16 mark, found themselves in a 19-19 tie game. New Mexico claimed the lead, but then the Cowboys evened things up again at 30-30 with a little over three minutes remaining in the first half.
UNM Freshman Damien Jefferson’s layup at the 3:20 mark was the last field goal the Lobos saw in that half, and Wyoming pulled ahead to lead 38-31 at the end of the break.
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The Cowboys controlled the second half as well, leading by as many as 13 points, up 62-49 with 10:31 remaining.
New Mexico, which never led in the second half, pushed hard to cut down the deficit and got as close as two points away a couple of times, but couldn’t make it all the way back.
With 4:57 remaining, New Mexico’s Elijah Brown got on the free throw line for the first time in the game. He didn’t get on the foul line at all during the Lobos’ previous match against Colorado State.
Brown has had 201 attempts in the 29 games he’s played this season, making almost 83 percent of them. But opponents have been able to stifle that part of his game as of late, as he has seen just three attempts in the last two games.
As a whole, the Lobos went 18-of-23 from the foul line, a 78.3 success rate.
But the Lobos couldn’t make enough shots from the floor, with MacDougall making a jumper at the 5:53 mark as the final points scored away from the foul line.
The team will be back in Albuquerque on Saturday, to host San Diego State for the last game of the regular season.
Isabel Gonzalez is a sports reporter for the Daily Lobo. She mainly covers men’s soccer and basketball. She can be reached at sports @dailylobo.com or on Twitter @cisabelg.
