The Lobos had a nice bounce-back game on Wednesday to start their conference season, beating Nevada 88-76 to snap their four-game losing streak. Things don’t get any easier though, as they travel to Fresno, CA to take on the Fresno State Bulldogs, another team with conference championship aspirations who just knocked off UNLV in Las Vegas. Although a loss likely won’t be devastating to their hopes of winning the conference, a win would give the Lobos a huge leg up on the competition and put the rest of the league on notice that they’re a team to be reckoned with.
Men’s Basketball vs. Nevada Recap
Conference play started Wednesday night for the Lobo Men’s Basketball team and they needed to get the bad taste out of their mouth from last week, when they went 0-4 with two very bad losses against Rice and Washington State. The game day didn’t get off to a good start, as freshman backup center Nikola Scekic announced that he was transferring an hour and a half before the game. With the departure of Scekic, the Lobos have only 3 true post players left on the roster with Obij Aget, Tim Williams and Joe Furstinger, which will force Coach Neal to use more four guard lineups than he has ever played. That might not be a bad thing, though, as parts of this game proved.
Men’s Basketball vs. Nevada Preview
A few years ago, I went to Hawaii for a friend’s wedding, expecting to spend time hiking, snorkeling, fishing, and otherwise enjoying all that the island had to offer. Instead, I stepped on a sea urchin my first day out there and was stuck on the couch for most of my trip. That still might have been a better Hawaii experience than what the Lobos just had. That holiday tournament ended their non-conference schedule with a thud, leaving them at 7-6 heading into conference play. They’ll look to regroup tonight against Nevada, hopefully righting the ship and getting the season back on track.
Women’s Basketball Conference Season Preview
It looks like for the third straight year that the Mountain West Conference will be a one bid league in Women’s Basketball, which means that every team will be more focused on the conference tournament championship compared the regular season championship, which doesn’t come with the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. Last year, the Lobos finished second in the regular season and lost to Boise State in the championship game of the tournament last season. Since Colorado State won the regular season title, they were awarded the MW bid into the WNIT while the Lobos played in the Women’s Basketball Invitational. It will be interesting to see how the conference season shakes out and see if the Lobos can knock of Colorado State to win both conference titles.
Women’s Basketball at Nevada Preview
The Lobos (7-4) return to action tonight, kicking off Mountain West Conference play by facing Nevada (1-10) in Reno. The Lobos look to regroup after a tough third quarter against NMSU that cost them the game against the Aggies. The Lobos finished out their non-conference slate with a solid 7-4 record with no bad losses and a great road win against Minnesota. The Lobos will look to build off last year’s 2nd place finish in both the conference regular season and tournament, with the ultimate goal to make the NCAA Tournament. The Lobos look to get off to a great start against a struggling Nevada Wolf Pack team. If the Lobos want to win the regular season title, the Lobos need to sweep the weaker teams in the conference and the Wolf Pack fit that bill.
Men’s Basketball: Players of the Game Update
The Lobo men’s basketball team wrapped up its non-conference schedule last week (I guess that’s a nice way to describe last week), giving us a chance to take a step back and see how things have gone so far for the players by looking at our Players of the Game awards, which also gives us an idea of where the team stands. The team has mostly been carried on the backs of a couple of transfers, for good and bad, but there is still a lot of talent on the team that makes us think that this team can get back to being who we thought they were two weeks ago.
Mountain West Men’s Basketball Reset
After an up and down (mostly down) non-conference season for the Mountain West teams, it’s finally time for the teams to start playing each other. Conference play starts on Wednesday and this year seems even more up in the air now than it did before the season started. So with that, we thought that it would be worthwhile to check back in with the conference and reset our expectations for how the season will play out.
Men’s Basketball Stats Glossary
(This page is a summary and description of the statistics used in our men’s basketball posts.)
Men’s Basketball vs. BYU Recap
The Lobos lucked out when a couple of other favorites in the Diamond Head Classic lost their first round matchups as well, which meant that they potentially still had the opportunity to collect a couple of quality wins. They got their first shot against BYU on Wednesday morning. It did not go well.
Women’s Basketball vs. NMSU (Game 2) Recap
The third quarter was not kind to the Lobos (7-4), in their Sunday afternoon game against NMSU. The Lobos managed to only score 3 points in the quarter with no field goals and saw their seven-point halftime lead turn into an eight-point deficit by the end of the quarter. The Lobos played great in the first quarter, where they jumped out to a 17-6 lead, and it appeared the Lobos were building off the Minnesota game. However, the Lobos went ice cold for the rest of the game, scoring only 30 points over the final three quarters, and went on to lose the game 52-47. After all the starters played great in the Minnesota game, they struggled to get going, as the starting back court combined for 12 points (on 4-24 shooting), 11 rebounds, 5 assists, and 16 turnovers. Hopefully, this game was just a blip on the radar and the Lobo backcourt will be able to lead the Lobos to a conference championship. One thing that I am sure Coach Sanchez pointed out to her team is that Khadijah Shumpert only had 4 shot attempts, which is far too few for her to really get going. If the Lobos want to be the team they have the potential to be, Shumpert, Beynon, Owens and Nunn have to be very productive. In this game Nunn and Shumpert both played well, but only had 9 field goal attempts between the two of them.