Lobos lose 64-62 to San Diego State, ending any hope of making NCAA Tournament
· Yahoo Sports
Bubble popped.
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The University of New Mexico’s NCAA Tournament hopes went up in a cloud of smoke with a 64-62 loss to San Diego State in a super-late Mountain West Conference Tournament semifinal game Friday night at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nev.
Aztecs guard B.J. Davis hit a game-winning layup with 2.1 seconds remaining. The Lobos had a last-second chance but couldn’t get a clean look from Jake Hall.
The loss ends any chance the Lobos had of making the NCAA’s field of 68. They came into Friday’s game, which many bracketologists and college basketball experts considered an elimination game for the loser, knowing they needed, at minimum, a win and a berth in the MWC title game Saturday afternoon to woo the selection committee.
Utah State punched its ticket to the finals with a convincing 79-66 win over Nevada. The top-seeded Aggies (27-6) are a lock for the NCAA after claiming the league’s regular season title.
What had been a four- to six-bid conference for the last few years, the Mountain West is considered by some to be a one-bid league.
No. 2 seed San Diego State and No. 3 New Mexico were tabbed as potential bid stealers before the tournament began, and with Friday’s loss dropping the Lobos to 23-10, it likely means the best they can do is a bid to the NIT.
NCAA and NIT bids will be announced Sunday. The winner of Saturday’s MWC title game gets an automatic bid to the Big Dance.
The Lobos went more than five minutes late in the second half without making a shot from the field, yet trailed only 62-58 with the outcome still in doubt. They battled back to tie it in the final minute on a Deyton Albury layup before the Davis game winner.
UNM found itself in foul trouble late in the first half. It trailed for more than 10 minutes in the half and was down 37-33 at the break as Hall and Albury each had three fouls. Hall was held to three points in the half (and the game) while Albury had five points in only nine minutes.
Hall was shadowed the entire half and never got things going. He took 10 shots in the game, making only one.
The highlight of the half came at the 11-minute mark when 5-foot-11 Lobos guard Uriah Tenette raced down court after an Albury turnover and launched himself to get a two-handed block at the rim on Davis. It led to a transition opportunity the other way where UNM’s Tajavis Miller drained a 3 from the top of the key to open a 16-11 lead.
It turned out to be the Lobos’ largest lead of the night as the Aztecs immediately responded with a 10-0 run to take a lead they’d hang on to for the first 13-plus minutes of the second half.
There were four ties and eight lead changes in the first half. The Lobos briefly tied it at 44 but immediately gave up another Aztecs burst, this time an 8-2 run. They tied it again at 52 in the final eight minutes and took their first lead since the 9-minute mark of the first half when Albury split the lane and converted a layup to make it 54-53 with 6:40 left.
NOTES
Friday’s game didn’t tip off until 10:30 p.m. Mountain time and past midnight on the East Coast. CBS Sports Network carried the game live, and when it finally reached halftime — at around 1:30 a.m. at the network’s New York City studios — four of the five studio hosts had changed into pajamas. The exception was Jon Rothstein, whose catch phrase is, “We sleep in May.” … The Lobos severely hurt themselves at the free throw line, missing 13 tries from the stripe and shooting 53.6% (15-28). Tomislav Buljan struggled once again from the line, missing five of his seven attempts. … This was the eighth and final meeting between the Lobos and Aztecs in MWC Tournament history, with each of the previous seven ending with the winner going on to capture the league’s automatic bid. … The Mountain West final will have two teams heading to the Pac-12 next year. Five of the eight teams in the tournament’s quarterfinals will stay in the conference moving forward. The Lobos and Nevada, both semifinal losers, were among them.