Lobos Fall at Colorado State 92-84 in Regular Season Finale
FORT COLLINS, Colo. – The New Mexico men’s basketball team ended its regular season schedule with an 92-84 loss at Colorado State on Friday night at Moby Arena. The Lobos (21-10, 8-10 MW) will be the No. 6 seed in next week’s Mountain West Tournament after falling to the Rams (14-17, 6-12 MW).
Morris Udeze led the Lobos with 25 points, while Jamal Mashburn, Jr. added 22 points, Donovan Dent scored 12 points off the bench, while Jaelen House scored 11 and Josiah Allick had 10 points and a game-high eight rebounds.
HOW IT HAPPENED
Both teams started the game strong offensively, with the Lobos holding a 9-8 lead at the first media timeout. The Rams used a 7-0 run to take a 19-15 lead with 11:00 remaining in the half and led 21-20 at the midway point. CSU would push the lead to six at 26-20 and would hold a 31-30 edge with 3:30 to play. The Rams would lead by as many as eight in the final minute of the half before taking a 41-35 lead into the break. Mashburn score 11 points to lead UNM in the first half.
In the second half, the Rams extended the lead to 10 in the first four minutes and would hold a 66-53 edge with 12:15 to go. The Lobos would cut the deficit to 66-60 at the midway point before the Rams pushed the advantage back to nine at 76-67 with 7:20 to go. UNM cut the deficit to 79-75 with 5:00 to play. That was as close as UNM would get as CSU closed out the 92-84 win at the free throw line.
LOBO NOTES
• Mashburn became the 16th Lobo in history to score 600 points in a season
• Mashburn became the sixth Lobo (fifth different player) to average 20.0 ppg in Mountain West play, the first since Elijah Brown in 2016-17
• Udeze became the first Lobo since Drew Gordon in 2011-12 to average a double-double in conference games
• New Mexico had three players average at least 15.0 ppg in conference play (Mashburn, House, Udeze), the first Mountain West team to accomplish the feat since Nevada in 2017-18
QUOTABLE
“When we take a step back, we are going to realize how far we have come in a short amount of time. We are proud of that, but until we figure out the defensive part of it, we are never going to go where we are trying to get to. We cannot have this mentality that we are just going to outscore everybody and win in this league. The league is too good. As we try to take the next step with our program, both through skill development and recruiting, we have to improve that mindset.” – Richard Pitino
UP NEXT
New Mexico will travel to Las Vegas next week for the Mountain West Tournament at the Thomas & Mack Center. The Lobos will be the No. 6 seed and begin play on Wednesday.