He said his team is supposed to be getting better on a daily basis, but he didn’t feel they accomplished that in Saturday’s 26-point romp at WisePies Arena.
“I thought that was a very average performance from my team,” Neal said. “I thought they came out in the first four minutes and played really good, (but) we still had a lot of mental breakdowns offensively. We still had a lot of mental breakdowns defensively — I’m a little concerned about that. You can’t play to your opponent.”
The Lobos got off to a scorching start and were leading 12-0 at the first media timeout. The Spartans didn’t score their first basket until the 14:50 mark in the first half.
UNM (14-7, 6-4 Mountain West) took a comfortable 31-15 lead into halftime following a 3-point buzzer beater by SJSU forward Brandon Mitchell that cut the deficit to 16 points.
In the first half the Lobos held the Spartans to just 21.4 percent (6-28 FG) from the floor and 18.8 percent (3-16 3FG) from the 3-point line. The 15 points and 21.4 percent shooting were both season lows for the Lobo defense.
The second half featured flaring tempers due to some questionably hard fouls from SJSU players on some wide-open Lobo looks. SJSU center Ryan Singer fouled junior forward Jordan Goodman on a layup and proceeded to angrily confront other Lobo players. Senior guard Hugh Greenwood stood up for his teammates and had a few choice words of his own, which also warranted a technical.
“It did get chippy. We would have had probably 10 more assists if they didn’t foul us going to the rim,” Greenwood said. “Credit to them for not giving up and playing hard for 40. We had some wide-open layups and they fouled us for sure.
“I got a tech for just sticking up for my teammates,” he continued. “I thought it was over with, and (Singer) came back for more. I just told him to have a look up at the scoreboard, and obviously that classified as taunting and I got a tech.”
UNM shot 46.2 percent (24-52 FG) in the game and 41.2 percent (7-17 3FG) from 3-point range. They did, however, struggle from the free throw line, connecting on 54.5 percent (12-22 FT). This performance came off the heels of a 10-10 free throw shooting game against Wyoming on Jan. 24.
With such a large lead for most of the game, the Lobos seemed to lose focus, their offense growing stagnant throughout stretches of the second half.
“It shouldn’t be hard at all (to lose focus), not when we’ve given games away and not been really productive in certain games,” Neal said. “I just told them this game is about getting better and I thought it was an average performance ... There shouldn’t be any reason not to stay focused.”
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Only two Lobos notched double-digit scoring nights. Senior guard Deshawn Delaney led them with 15 points, while freshman guard Sam Logwood chipped in 10 points of his own. SJSU (2-19, 0-9 MW) had two double-digit scorers with Rashad Muhammad (15 points) and Jaleel Williams (14 points).
Kyle Tomasi is a sports reporter for the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at sports@dailylobo.com or on Twitter
@KyTo22.
