PERPLEXING LOSS
UNM men take another step backward at Air Force
U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. — The Lobos lost their poise on Tuesday night against Boise State.
They apparently couldn’t rediscover it Saturday afternoon inside Clune Arena.
Playing for the first time this season without 6-foot-9 senior Joe Furstinger, the Lobos surrendered 54 second-half points on Saturday, losing to Air Force 100-92.
UNM had blown out this same Air Force team 87-58 in Albuquerque on Dec. 27 but displayed little chemistry, and even less defense, in the rematch.
Asked after the game why his team again looked so unlike the one playing with heart and cohesion just a couple weeks ago, Lobos head coach Paul Weir was at a loss.
“That’s a great question. We just discussed it,” Weir said of his lengthy postgame talk with his team before addressing media.
“It’s unfortunate. I really thought at one point we had bottled something pretty good. ... The San Diego State game, the UNLV game, there was just a good vibe. I think we all felt like we were going to win (those games). We had a good presence about us. I thought the 9-second mark of the Boise game (during a timeout with UNM down 1 in that game) was the first time I just felt something different.
“We’ve got to get it back. We’ve got to get that reconnection back as a unit, as a group, to where we can overcome bad runs, bad games, bad whatever and have good team unity. Right now, we just don’t have that.”
The second league loss in a row — and third in the past four — drops the Lobos to 7-6 in Mountain West games and 12-14 overall. Air Force improved to 10-13 overall, 4-7 in league games.
UNM had six players score in double figures, including a career-high 26 from freshman Makuach Maluach. But that was wasted in a game they allowed the Falcons to shoot 59 percent from the floor and never seemed to show the look of a team on the same page.
The game had 53 foul calls — 26 on UNM, 27 on Air Force — and lacked a good flow, but that wasn’t why the Lobos lost.
After leading 53-46 at the half, UNM’s defense continually broke down in the second half, especially on the back end of the press, as the Falcons turned the final 20 minutes of the game into a layup line and dunk contest on an open rim.
Air Force scored 42 points in the paint in the second half and had scoring runs of 12-0 (to open the half) and 9-0 (midway through the half) to put the Lobos away.
It was unclear if the Lobos simply weren’t defending as designed in the second half or if the team was just incapable of making adjustments to stop the layups at the back end of the press.
“A little bit of both,” Weir said. “Unfortunately some breakdowns in the frontcourt. I thought in the first half we really weren’t being aggressive enough and because our defense was just struggling, we were trying to up the tempo and trying to get some turnovers and trying to get the game going to where we could get some turnovers and get back in the game. But (Air Force) scored in the back of the press. They played really, really well.”
There were other reasons UNM couldn’t protect the rim, too. Primarily because Furstinger, the team’s top shot blocker, missed the trip while serving a league suspension for an unsportsmanlike hard foul attempt on a Boise State player in Tuesday’s loss.
Furstinger is the third Lobo senior and fourth Lobo player since league play began to do something that warranted a suspension from either the league office or from Weir. Furstinger tweeted an apology Saturday for not being there to help his team.
“We’ve had a lot of guys in and out of the lineup lately and I think it’s affected our offense and our offensive flow,” Weir said. “But, even aside from that, it’s more just the chemistry as a group that we have to get back.”