The Lobos got a week off after getting Josh Adams-ed on Saturday, which gave them a full week to prepare for their visit to San Jose State. The Spartans are still one of the bottom teams in the conference, but they have made some legitimate strides this season. Still, this is one the Lobos can’t afford to lose.
A Little about San Jose State
When San Jose State’s head coach Dave Wojcik took over the program a few years ago, he found the cupboard completely bare. The Spartans were moving to the more difficult Mountain West conference from the WAC, where they were had finished in last place two years in a row, and didn’t really even return much from that team. Because of that, Wojcik has had a rough go of it so far at SJSU. The team has only won two conference games since they’ve joined the MW and have only won eight D-1 games in that span. Part of that is because several of the guys he brought in have either transferred or been kicked off the team. It got so bad that last year they had to suit up a couple of football players for a game just so they had enough players. They’re slowly but surely starting to turn the corner, though, meaning that the cupboard isn’t complexly bare anymore, just mostly.
The Spartans typically use an eight man rotation, all of whom have spent time at one point or another in the starting lineup. However, the starting lineup has remained constant for the past five games, so if that remains the case, then we’ll see guards Isaac Thornton and Jaycee Hillsman and forwards Cody Schwartz, Frank Rogers, and Ryan Welage. Hillsman, Schwartz, and Welage are all freshmen, which should give a good idea about how inexperienced this team is.
Still, the 6’9” Welage might be having the best season of anyone on the team, as he’s leading the team in scoring, with 12.9 points per game, and is second in rebounds, with 6.3 boards per game. He’s also the team’s best three-point shooter, taking almost four attempts per game and making 44% of them. In fact, the other forwards, the 6’9” Rogers and the 6’8” Schwartz, are the next best three-point shooters on the team (although Schwartz being third with his 29.1% is maybe more indicative of how bad the guards have been at shooting from range). All this means that the Lobo bigs are really going to have to make sure they cover these guys all the way out to the perimeter.
As for the guards, the 6’2” Thornton has been good at distributing the ball, but unfortunately that’s been for both teams. He has a high assist rate, at 24.9%, but he also has an equally high turnover rate. To make up for the turnovers, he does has a high steal rate, good for 87th in the country. As mentioned, he’s not much of a three-point shooter, but he has been pretty effective inside the arc, shooting 55%. Hillsman hasn’t been having a particularly good season so far, especially on the offensive end, but he’s starting to show a bit of a touch from three-point range, making 8-24 of his attempts in conference play compared to the 3-17 he shot in non-conference games. Another guy we’ll see a lot of is Princeton Onwas, who is a redshirt senior that played a season at Utah (after two years of JUCO) before coming to SJSU. He is a high-usage player who attacks the basket effectively and draws a lot of fouls while doing so, so our guards will need to be careful about staying out of foul trouble when he’s on the court.
Overall, the Spartans struggle in most areas of the game. They have the 301st ranked offense according to KenPom.com and the 259th ranked defense. That makes sense, as they don’t really have much that you can point to and say that they do that thing particularly well. They’re above average in both shooting and defending two pointers, in large part because they’re good at avoiding blocked shots and fairly decent at blocking their opponent’s shots, but that’s about it. They shoot a lot of three pointers, but they only shoot 29.9% as a team. They’re decent at drawing free throws, but they only make 64.2% of their attempts. They play fast, but have issues with turnovers.
However, this is a legitimately young team with six freshmen on the roster, so I’m sure the goal is not really to win a bunch of games this year, but to install a style of play that relies on pace, three pointers, and drawing fouls, which we could think of as the Boise State model (believe it or not, that’s where Wojcik coached right before he came to San Jose). From there, the plan would be to develop all of these young guys so they can execute this style of play more effectively. If all that works, which seems like a tall order given all of the obstacles that are in place, then the Spartans could become a scary team to see on the schedule.
Scattered Game Thoughts
- It was officially announced on Thursday that Cullen suffered a concussion on the last play of the Wyoming play, which means that he’ll at least miss this game and potentially one next week too. This news probably won’t upset parts of the Lobo fan base, but it’s certainly a blow to the team. Luckily, if this was going to happen, it couldn’t have been timed better. Not only was there a week off between games for him to get some recovery time in, the Lobos are playing one of the weakest teams in the conference. This is a game that the Lobos hopefully were going to be able to give their bench minutes anyway; now they just have to. I expect Jordan Hunter and Tim Jacobs to get roughly the same amount of minutes in this one with Jordan maybe getting the start. This is a big opportunity for both of these guys, but I think that’s especially true for Jordan. If he shows that he can run the offense in extended game minutes, he could find himself on the court more regularly, which would be good for everyone, I think.
- You might notice that this will be the Spartan’s eighth conference game while only being the Lobos’ sixth. This is, of course, because the Lobos have already had both of their bye days and SJSU doesn’t have their first bye day until February 6th. Even worse, Utah State gets their first bye until next Wednesday and Wyoming doesn’t get their first bye until February 10th. So that’s three teams who don’t have their first bye until after the Lobos have both of theirs, which is kind of ridiculous. I don’t know if the schedule was designed differently this year or if it’s happened before but just not to the Lobos so I didn’t care, but that shouldn’t happen. I don’t think that it would be that difficult to ensure that each team has had a bye day before anyone starts having their second one. At any rate, let’s just hope that no one else on the team gets banged up, as there aren’t any more breaks from here on out.
- Do you realize that currently 7 of the 11 teams in the conference have three wins? Now, granted, one of those teams has two losses (UNM) and two have four losses (WYO and USU), but this conference season is starting to look as chaotic in the middle as we were all expecting. San Diego State and Boise State have separated themselves out on the top (and Air Force and SJSU are clearly on the bottom), but it’s going to be a dogfight for those top five seeds for the conference tournament. That’s especially important as this legitimately might be a one-bid conference, so only having to win three games, instead of the four that the 6-11th seeds would have to, is a major plus.
Prediction
This should be a bit of a track meet, as both teams like to play fast, but hopefully the Lobos play at the fast tempo that they’re comfortable with instead of going too fast like they did at UNLV. If they play sloppy out of control, it will give the Spartans a shot at winning this one, especially if they’re hitting their threes. That might have worried me more if the team had been on a roll, as this feels like an easy one to overlook. However, given that the team really needs a win, I think that the Lobos will come out ready and hungry in this one and will pull out an 85-69 win.
Game Info
Who: UNM Lobos (10-8, 3-2) vs. San Jose State (6-13, 1-6)
Where: The Event Center, San Jose, CA
When: Saturday, January 23, 2016 at 3:00pm MT
Radio: 770 KKOB
TV: Campus Insiders (stream only)