In their first appearance in the newly-named Dreamstyle Arena, the University of New Mexico women’s basketball team defeated the Eastern New Mexico Greyhounds.
The Lobos defeated the Greyhounds by a score of 80-66 in front of a crowd of 4,016, though UNM head coach Mike Bradbury said it wasn’t easy.
Defensively, the Lobos gave up 11 3-pointers and had their half court press broken on several occasions.
Bradbury credited his team’s defensive efforts to them learning new things on that end.
“We played hard enough,” Bradbury said. “But all (of) this is brand new, so when we were in the right spot we stole it and made it hard on them; when we weren’t we would just miss it and they’d bang a 3.”
Indeed the Greyhounds seemed to make 3-pointers off of defensive miscues by the Lobos, as they shot 11-for-29 from the field, with five of those coming from Brandi Gomez (cq), a 5-foot-10 guard out of Clovis, New Mexico.
When speaking on how his team guarded Gomez, Bradbury kept it simple.
“We didn’t get player specific,” Bradbury said. “This was about us.”
Freshman guard N’Dea Flye started off the scoring in the game, putting up the Lobos up 2-0 right away on a layup.
But ENMU fired right back with a 3-pointer of their own, giving them the 3-2 lead. Senior guard Tesha Buck made her presence known when she made her first 3-pointer to put the Lobos up 7-5 and then with her second in the first quarter, which put the Lobos up by seven points, 14-7, with under five minutes in the opening quarter.
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Buck wasn’t the only player on the court early on making shots from range. The Greyhounds’ Gomez, also managed to nail two 3s in the first quarter.
Late in the first, freshman guard Jaedyn De La Cerda hit a 3-pointer shortly after coming off the bench, though ENMU answered right back with a 3 of their own, to shorten the lead to 23-16 going into the second quarter.
In the second quarter, the Greyhounds got on the board first on a layup. But that score was quickly mitigated by a layup from Lobo freshman guard Jasmine Smith to make the score 25-18 in favor of UNM early on.
Slowly but surely, the Lobos managed to grow their lead, before they eventually capped off the half on a Buck 3-pointer to go up 41-31 at the half.
For the Greyhounds, the 3 ball kept them lingering around in the first half. As a team, they went 6-for-12 from range — with three of those coming from Gomez in quarters one and two.
Buck, who ended the first half in similar fashion, also knocked down the first shot of the third quarter, giving the Lobos a 44-31 advantage. That shot grew into a 5-0 run early on, but the Greyhounds quickly capped that by going on a 5-0 run of their own.
However, a 3-pointer from senior guard Cherise Beynon started an 8-0 run by the Lobos, eventually putting them up 59-36, before eventually capping off the quarter with a 57-46 lead.
The fourth quarter is when Beynon really started to heat up, though, as she scored eight of her 17 points in that frame — mostly off of free throws.
Buck, once again, put the first points up in the fourth quarter on a jumper, putting the Lobos up by 13. From there, the Lobos didn’t let the Greyhounds get within 8 points the remainder of the fourth quarter.
As a team, UNM shot 37.7 percent from the field and 29.2 percent from range. Buck and a Beynon both finished with 17 points, though Beynon nearly threatened with a triple-double as she had eight rebounds and eight assists, respectively.
Junior center Jaisa Nunn, who tore her ACL in a game last season, made the start on Wednesday evening. She scored nine points, while also bringing down eight rebounds of her own.
Beynon said that — both individually and as a team — performance was void of anything spectacular.
“For me personally, I think I did an okay job,” Beynon said. “I did what I had to do, like I always do. … As a team, I think we did alright. Defensively is where we need to work, offense is always going to come. So we just need to defensively rebound and guard the ball, and I think we’ll be a really good team later on down the road.”
Matthew Narvaiz is a senior sports reporter for the Daily Lobo. He primarily covers baseball and men’s and women’s basketball but also contributes content for football. He can be contacted at sports@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @matt_narvaiz.
