New Mexico Lobos Women’s Basketball – On The Mountain West Road
Wednesday: New Mexico 63, San Diego State 47
By Richard Stevens – Senior Writer/GoLobos.com.
It was a tale of two Lobo teams and a tale of two halves.
The New Mexico Lobos’ team that had won seven straight Mountain West games might not have shown up in the first half when the Lobos battled the San Diego State Aztecs in Viejas Arena. UNM was down 27-23 at the break.
However, the New Mexico Lobos’ team eyeing the 2015 MW title definitely showed up for the second 20 minutes as UNM outscored the Aztecs by 20 points in that half and raced to a convincing 63-47 victory. The Lobos led by as many as 18 points in racing to their eighth consecutive Mountain West win.
The road win keeps the Lobos, 15-10 overall, atop the Mountain West standings with a glistening 11-3 league mark and tied with Colorado State in the sprint to the wire.
“It’s a tough task to come up here and win,” said Lobo Coach Yvonne Sanchez. “We didn’t play real well in the first half. We came out and went to work.”
The Lobos came out of the halftime break in a four-point hole and simply ran away from the Aztecs.
UNM used good defense, good offense and much-improved ball handling to race to the 16-point win. New Mexico shot 50 percent from the field (25-of-50) for the 40 minutes, but went 16-of-23 (69.6 percent) from the floor in the second half.
You almost wondered if the Lobos had missed the bus to Viejas Arena and another UNM team had replaced Sanchez’s crew. Actually, the Lobos’ bus broke down on the way to the San Diego State gym and the Aztecs had to send out a campus shuttle to haul their opponents to the Viejas.
“It looked like a clown car,” Sanchez said of the shuttle that packed in her traveling party.
Maybe the unorthodox ride to Viejas Arena put the Lobos out of sync — but only for a half. The Lobos simply demolished San Diego State in the second half. The Lobos ran to a 44-34 lead before SDSU cut its deficit to seven points. A 3-pointer by Cherise Beynon pushed UNM back up 51-39. The Aztecs never really challenged again.
Bryce Owens used the glass to put UNM up 54-41 with 4:27 to go. UNM cruised in for the easy win.
“This was a really good ball game for our kids,” said Sanchez, whose Lobos probably are looking at a more severe MW road test Saturday at UNLV. “These players are terrific. It was a great team effort.”
The Lobos were led in the scoring column by Khadijah Shumpert with 17 points going 7-of-13 from the field. “17 points against two very physical post players is phenomenal,” said Sanchez. “I thought Bryce had a terrific game and just led our team.
“Tiesh (Antiesha Brown) had a tough go because they denied her the entire game.”
Brown joined Shumpert in double figures with 10 points going 3-of-7 from the field. Owens had six points and four assists. Beynon chipped in eight points going 2-of-2 from 3-point range and the talented freshman added seven boards.
The Aztecs shot 44.9 percent from the field and 40.9 percent in the second half. The Aztecs’ shooting percentage was not bad, but they simply could not slow down the Lobo offense.
The Aztecs needed to do a lot of things well in order to hang with UNM in the second half and one thing they needed was to hit some free throws. SDSU went 3-of-14 from the line. The Aztecs were 0-of-1 from long range.
UNM won the board battle 31-to-29. UNM outscored SDSU 42-to-28 in the paint and 21-to-9 in points off turnovers.
“Our team defense is absolutely terrific,” said Sanchez.