LOGAN, UTAH — Despite dressing just seven players on Wednesday night, The University of New Mexico men’s basketball team (11-12, 6-4 MW) closed a 15-point deficit to just three with one minute left before falling 89-80 on the road at Utah State (13-11, 6-5 MW). Four players saw 34 minutes or more on the floor to tie or set personal-highs for most minutes in a game.
Junior Anthony Mathis paced the Lobos in the near-comeback with a career-high 25 points in his career-high 36 minutes, followed by junior Chris McNeal with 21 points in his season-high 36 minutes. McNeal’s 21 points marked his third time this season scoring 20+ points and his most points in a game since he scored 29 in the fourth game of the season against Tennessee Tech.
Senior Joe Furstinger played nearly the entire 40 minutes, tallying six points, nine rebounds, six assists, three blocks and one steal. Freshman Makuach Maluach was the third Lobo to register double figures, collecting 15 points, while finishing second on the team in rebounds with six.
“Unfortunately we just couldn’t get any stops tonight…I’m disappointed we lost, I felt like we had a chance to win the game. We were not very good mentally tonight,” head coach Paul Weir said. “I don’t know if that was the distractions of guys not being here, I don’t believe it’s fatigue, but maybe it could have been.
“We’re disappointed, we have to get better, we’ll worry about some of the other distractions but we just made a lot of mental errors we can’t make to win a basketball game like this and that’s what’s disappointing – there are no moral victories.”
It was a game of stretches in Logan as both teams traded significant runs in the final 10 minutes of the match. Utah State led the majority of the game and built a 15-point lead at the 10:25 mark until a resilient, understaffed UNM squad rallied back, pulling out a 9-0 run that included back-to-back threes from Mathis and junior Troy Simons to make it a six-point game, 70-64, with eight minutes to play.
The Aggies responded with a 9-0 run of their own, increasing the lead back to 15, 79-64 with 5:28 left on the clock.
The Lobos made a mad dash for the win over the ensuing four minutes, going on a 16-4 run that included a trio of Mathis 3-pointers and was capped by a triumphant Simons dunk to make it a three-point game, 83-80, with 1:03 left. Mathis went 6-for-10 from three on the night.
USU’s Quinn Taylor hit a layup to make it a five-point game, 85-80, with 32 seconds left but Mathis racked up his fifth foul on the play, putting Taylor at the line for the and-one that put Utah State up six.
Another pair of Lobo fouls over the final 27 seconds added four more free throws from the Aggies for the 89-80 final.
On the night, the Lobos shot 48.3 percent from the field, normally enough for the victory as UNM entered the game 8-2 when shooting between 40-49.9 percent. Utah State fired at a clip of 56.4 percent, however, going 31-of-55 from the floor. Both teams scored 13 3-pointers as the Lobos finished 13-for-28 (46.4%) and the Aggies connected on 13-of-24 (54.2%).
The Lobos forced 13 turnovers and committed just 10 but were outrebounded 32-25.
Leading the Aggies was sophomore guard Koby McEwen who scored a career-high 31 points to go along with 13 rebounds. He went 10-of-15 from the floor including 6-of-8 from 3-point range and a perfect 5-for-5 from the free throw line. He led four Aggies in double figures. McEwen played all 40 minutes for Utah State as the team fielded just eight players on the court on the night.
The Lobos return to Albuquerque for just a day before hitting the road again, this time to San José State on Saturday, February 3 at 4 p.m. MT. The game will air live on AT&T SportsNet.