One down, one to go.
The men’s basketball team bounced back from two straight losses, beating Air Force 86-56 Wednesday night at the Pit in front of 15,152 fans.
The Lobos (23-6, 9-4 MWC) are one game away from capturing their third regular season conference title in four years.
“We wanted to get back home and get back to playing at the level that we had been playing at,” head coach Steve Alford said. “I thought tonight we did an awful lot of good things.”
One of those good things was freshman guard Hugh Greenwood’s play as he led the rout of the Falcons with a career-high 22 points and six rebounds.
In the second half, the Aussie caught fire, scoring UNM’s first 14 points of the period in the first three minutes.
“(My) teammates kept giving me the ball,” Greenwood said. “Kendall (Williams) was calling plays for me.”
Greenwood went 5-of-5, including four 3-pointers in the stretch.
The first half was a contest between Air Force and senior forward Drew Gordon.
The 6-foot 9-inch conference preseason player of the year came out firing, scoring 12 of the Lobos’ first 18 points.
He finished the half 8-of-9 shooting with 16 points. Gordon didn’t take another shot the rest of the game and finished with his 14th double-double of the season and 27th of his career, with 17 points and 11 rebounds.
Gordon and company came out to start the game with a bang defensively.
The Lobos held the Falcons to just 29.6 percent shooting in the first half making only 8-of-27 shots.
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After giving up 71 and 83 points in the last two games, UNM contested almost every shot and kept Falcon guard Michael Lyons in check, holding him to 3-of-11 shooting for nine points — Lyons scored just six points in the previous meeting.
“We made shots difficult for them, we took away any kind of transition that they had and we were able to get out and get our transition game going,” Alford said.
“We’ve done a really good job on what I think is their best scorer,” Alford said. “We wanted to make somebody else have to score tonight.”
The Falcons finished shooting 36.5 percent from the field making 19-of-52 shots.
The Lobo bench outscored the Falcons’ 31-13.
Senior guard Phillip McDonald led the bench, scoring with 13 points from 4-of-8 from 3-point range.
UNM’s final game of the regular season is senior day on Saturday afternoon against Boise State.
“Boise’s going to get a good team on Saturday so hopefully they come prepared, which I know they will, and it’s going to be a good fight,” Gordon said.
Before the game, Gordon was one of several former UCLA players mentioned in George Dohrmann’s Sports Illustrated article due to be released on shelves on March 5th.
In the article, former teammates’ of the Lobo forward told Dohrmann in an interview that, in 2008, Gordon, along with freshmen teammates Jerime Anderson and J’mison Morgan regularly drank alcohol and smoked marijuana — sometimes before practices.
Dohrmann also wrote that Gordon would disrupt practices whenever he was criticized for his play, and mentioned an altercation with then teammate Reeves Nelson, which left Gordon with a black eye.
Gordon declined to comment on the matter and said his focus is the Mountain West title.
“We have something to accomplish right now,” Gordon said. “I’m not going to involve myself in that situation and that mess over there.”
Alford said all he could speak to, is the time Gordon has been at UNM.
“All I know is that we’ve had him for two and a half, three years now, he’s been a double-double guy for us, he’s been an incredible for us, he’s been a great person for us, he’s been a great teammate,” Alford said.
