INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – The New Mexico men’s basketball team had its 2025-26 season come to an end on Thursday night with a 74-69 loss to Tulsa in the NIT semifinals at Hinkle Fieldhouse. The Lobos finish the season with a 26-11 record, while the Golden Hurricane (30-7) advance to Sunday’s NIT final.
Jake Hall led New Mexico with 20 points. JT Rock added 14 points off the bench, tying his career high.
HOW IT HAPPENED
Tulsa used an early 6-0 run to take an 8-3 lead with 15:30 left and pushed the margin to 14-7 with 13:00 left with another 6-0 run. The Golden Hurricane led 19-12 at the midway point of the half before a 6-0 Lobo run cut the margin to 19-18 with 8:00 left. Back-to-back triples from Tenette gave the Loboa 24-22 lead with 6:00 to play. The teams would trade the lead for several minutes before Tulsa ended the half on an 8-0 run to take a 36-29 lead. Uriah Tenette had eight first-half points to lead New Mexico.
In the second half, the teams traded scores early before the Lobos trimmed the margin to 42-40 by using a 6-0 run with 14:20 to play. Tulsa led 49-44 at the midway point of the half before UNM tied the game, 59-59, with 5:00 left. Tulsa used an 8-0 run to take a 67-59 lead with 2:00 to play before UNM closed to 67-63 with 1:20 left. A Tomislav Buljan triple with 58 seconds left made it a 69-66 game, but that was as close as the Lobos would get in the final minute.
LOBO NOTES
• The Lobos were in their third NIT semifinal (1964, 1990, 2026)
• New Mexico’s 26 wins under first-year head coach Eric Olen was the second-most in program history for a first-year head coach (27 in 2013-14 under Craig Neal)
• Hall had his 12th 20-point game of the season, a UNM freshman record and tied for second-most by a freshman in Mountain West history
• Hall became the 94th freshman in Division I history to score 600 points in a season (605 points – UNM and Mountain West freshman records)
• It was UNM’s school-record 37th game of the season, as Jake Hall (the only Lobo to start every game this season), set a school record with 37 starts in a season
QUOTABLE
“Congratulations to Tulsa. They are a great basketball team and played better than we did tonight. They deserve to advance. I want to thank the NIT for putting on a first-class event and allowing our guys to come here and experience this. We played hard, but had some errors in the first half that hurt us. It wasn’t our best performance, but our guys fought like they have all year long. We just couldn’t make enough plays tonight.” – Eric Olen