Updated: 6:55 p.m.
By Greg Archuleta
UNM Assistant Director of Communications
On Dec. 7, a dejected University of New Mexico women’s basketball team made the long bus ride home from Las Cruces after losing 70-59 to in-state rival New Mexico State – for just the second time in 36 meetings.
On Feb. 28 … how do you like the Lobos NOW?
Senior Antiesha Brown scored 21 points, eclipsing the 1,000-point plateau for her career, and rallied UNM from a five-point deficit with 5 ½ minutes left to a nail-biting, 63-60 victory over Fresno State on Senior Day Saturday at WisePies Arena/The Pit.
The Lobos (17-11, 13-4 Mountain West) established several other superlatives in the win, besides winning 16 of their last 20 games since that 1-7 start with the loss to the Aggies:
- The 13 conference wins are the most in school history.
- The Lobos won their 12th straight home game for the first time since they won 14 straight to finish the 2004-05 season.
- The Lobos finished with an unblemished home conference record (9-0) for the fifth time in school history and also for the first time since 2004-05.
- UNM has clinched no worse than a top-three finish in the Mountain West race.
Brown, who also had a game-high nine rebounds, hit four clutch free throws in the final 27 seconds that helped UNM preserve its victory.
“Our team just has a lot of heart,” Lobo coach Yvonne Sanchez said. “They do. They have a lot of toughness, especially when we were down and we needed some stops.”
The Lobos were down 48-43 with 7:02 to be exact, after Fresno State’s Raven Fox’s layup gave her team its biggest lead of the night.
Enter Brown the hero – all that was missing was her cape.
The Clovis, N.M., product shot a 3-pointer that bounce straight up off the back of the rim and through the next to cut the Bulldogs’ lead to 48-46. UNM’s defense forced an offensive foul on Fresno State’s Alex Sheedy, and Brown tied the game on the other end on a layup.
The Lobos never trailed again.
“I was down, pounding the floor, hoping it would go in, said Brown, who needed eight points coming in to become the 19th member of the Lobos’ 1,000-point club. “When it did, I celebrated for a half-second, then said, ‘OK, I need to get back on defense!’
“The thing about Senior Day – I talked to a lot of the seniors that came before me – Caroline Durbin, Chinyere Nnaji, Jourdan Erskine, Deeva Vaughn, Sarah Halasz – they told me, ‘Just relax and don’t think about it being your senior game because you don’t want to be the senior that tries to do too much. You end up playing terrible, and it’s a terrible memory for your senior night. I’m just happy we were able to get the win.”
But not without a fight that the Bulldogs (19-8, 11-5) put up all game. The Lobos led by as many as eight in the first half (20-12 and 22-14) before the visitors rallied to cut the lead to 26-25 at the half.
UNM stormed out with the first six points of the second half to push it back up to 32-25, but Fresno State kept chipping away. They went on a 23-11 run, thanks to Fox, who scored eight of the last 12 points and assisted on another basket during that 11-minute stretch.
“I can’t repeat what I told them,” Sanchez joked. “I just told them they had to come out and be tougher. And we found a way to fight. Tiesh hits a big 3 and gets that two driving in the paint. We just didn’t look back.”
Khadijah Shumpert reclaimed the lead for UNM with an old-fashioned 3-point play on a layup and a foul for a 51-48 lead with 4:58 left. She scored 15 points for the Lobos on 5-of-6 shooting, but she drew her fifth foul with 3:35 left in the game.
Sheedy, who led the Bulldogs with 17 points, tied the game at 52 on a layup with 2:30 left. UNM then got a two-for-one on free throws before backup post Kianna Keller hit a huge layup with 1:36 left to push the lead to 56-53. Another Brown layup and Bryce Owens free throw pushed the lead to 59-53.
Three-pointers by Robin Draper and Alex Furr sandwiched two Brown free throws to cut UNM’s lead to 61-59. Brown his two more free throws to make it 63-59 with 18 seconds.
“This is tough to say, but I had two free throws against (then No. 1 Stanford on Nov. 24) that could’ve given us a one-point lead late in that game, but I missed them both,” Brown said. “After that, I practiced free throws like no other, and I’ve improved my percentage ever since.”
There was one last bit of drama: Brown was called for a foul on a 3-point Sheedy 3-pointer with four seconds left, but Sheedy missed two of her three free throws, and Brown fittingly got the last rebound and ran out the clock.
When asked about carrying the team home on Saturday for her last game at The Pit, Brown shied away from the acclaim.
“So many different people have picked the team up at different points of the year,” Brown said. “I think this year, we just have such a great group of girls. We just have fun together, but we’re also willing to go through the wall for each other. And I think that’s what speaks volumes about our program this year.”
Freshman Cherise Beynon had 12 points, eight rebounds, four steals and three assists in yet another all-around performance for the Lobos. Bryce Owens added nine points as the Lobos outscored the Bulldogs 16-4 in fastbreak points.
Shumpert had five rebounds to go with her 15 points (she also made all five of her free throws) as UNM outrebounded Fresno State 38-31.
“It’s a team effort, obviously,” Sanchez said. “It’s just good to see the program getting back to where coach (Don) Flanagan had it there in 2003, ’04 and ’05 when we were winning conference titles. I don’t want people to forget what he did here. He made this one of the best jobs in the country. It’s really good to get back to that so people won’t forget him.
“And I want to thank Antiesha and (fellow senior) Maddie (Muraida). They’ve been two seniors who have really just been the face of Lobo basketball. That’s the kind of character of people we want in this program, always.”