Saturday afternoon, the Lobos took on the Wyoming Josh Adamses, who were able to dictate the pace of the game and use a phenomenal individual performance to pull off a 70-68 upset victory on the road. The loss dropped the Lobos to 3-2 in the conference (10-8 overall) and leaves the team once again looking to pull themselves together after a week full of losses.

Game Recap

The question going into this game was whether or not Wyoming was going to be able to force the game to be played at their preferred pace and with their preferred style. Fairly quickly, the answer became a resounding “yes”. The game was played at a slow tempo, with the Cowboys being very deliberate on offense and not allowing the Lobos to have many opportunities to run the court. The teams traded runs throughout, with the Cowboys getting hot from the outside (finishing with 12 made threes) and the Lobos finding success down low (they ended up with 42 points in the paint).

Really, though, the story of this game was Wyoming’s Josh Adams, who had one of the best performances by a Lobo opponent in the Pit that we’ve seen in quite some time. He was basically unguardable all night, freeing himself up whether or not he had the ball, getting to the line with regularity, and drilling three-pointer after three-pointer whether or not he had a hand in his face. He scored 38 points on only 15 field goal attempts, which is ridiculous. What’s even more ridiculous is the 22 points he scored on 7 field goal attempts in the second half. Just think about that. A good rule of thumb for whether a player was efficient on offense or not is if they had as many points as they had field goal attempts. In the second half, Adams had more than three times as many points as he had field goal attempts, which is absolutely crazy.

I don’t think that there’s much of a doubt that he was the difference in the game. After all, look at what his teammates did in this game: they shot 11-35 from the field (31.4%), 5-20 from three (25%), and 5-13 from the free throw line (38.5%). There’s no doubt that if he didn’t have this sort of performance, Wyoming wouldn’t have had much of a chance in this game. Sure, there were a few things that the Lobos maybe could have done to slow him down, but he was just on a different level for this one.

If there’s any positive to take away from this game, it’s when you consider the following:

• The Lobos’ best player was benched for the first 10 minutes of the game for disciplinary reasons
• The Lobos missed 12 free throws, with Elijah and Cullen missing 8 between them
• The Lobos only shot 1-7 from three point range
• Wyoming only committed 7 turnovers, with two of them being shot clock violations where they weren’t really even trying to shoot the ball
• Josh Adams went bananas

From all that, it’s a little crazy that the Lobos were still in this game until the final buzzer, losing by a final score of 70-68. This is certainly a bad, damaging loss, but it does feel a little fluky. When the Lobos head up to Laramie later this season, I think they’ll get their revenge. (Wait, what do you mean they don’t play at Wyoming this year?)

Players of the Game

1. Tim Williams (33 points on the season): In his first time playing Wyoming, Tim W. seemed to handle the Cowboys’ unique style like an old pro. He had a very efficient day at the office, scoring 17 points on 7-11 shooting and picking up 9 rebounds in his full 40 minutes of action. Wyoming didn’t seem to have much of an answer for him, which made sometimes feel like he could score whenever he touched the ball. In games like this one, where he is able to abuse the other team down low, he and the team need to work hard to make sure that the offense runs through him. We could see some huge games out of him if we do.
2. Xavier Adams (4 points on the season): With Elijah on the bench at the beginning of the game, X got his first start of the season and he made the most of it, playing with a lot of energy and passion on his way to a 13-point performance. Although he started this game, if he can bring that sort of energy game-in and game-out off of the bench, that would really help solve some of the issues that the team is having getting points out of their reserves. He came off the bench to score 7 points while playing only 6 minutes in the second half, which was kind of strange, so one can’t help but wonder what he would have done if he had seen more time on the court.
3. Obij Aget (12 points on the season): I was tempted to leave this slot blank, as pretty much everyone on the team had as many negatives in this game as they had positives, but I ultimately decided to slot Big O in the slot instead. He had a fairly productive game, scoring 11 points on 5-8 shooting and grabbing 5 rebounds, and played fairly well on defense. He managed to get into foul trouble again, which hindered his ability to put up bigger numbers, but all in all that didn’t get in the way of him having an alright night. He has some obvious flaws that I think cloud some people’s view of him, namely the foul issues and his hands, but he’s playing pretty well right now and will hopefully keep getting better as the season goes along.

Scattered Thoughts

• It was a major bummer to see Elijah get benched for the first part of the game and an even bigger one to hear that three other players were also facing discipline, but I’m actually glad to see Neal sticking to his guns on this one. Now, there’s a chance that this discipline was a big reason why the team ended up losing, but these guys broke team rules and if he didn’t enforce the consequences, he could have easily set the sort of precedent that would have had some players walking all over him. They all seem like good guys, though, so I would expect them to learn from this and move forward.
• The substitution pattern was a little strange in this one, especially in the second half. In that half, the starters stayed in the game until there was only 9:29 left in the game and that substitution seemed to only be because Big O picked up his fourth foul. There might be a few things going on here. First, we don’t know what the punishments were for the other players on the team, so they could well have been benched for the second half. Second, because of the pace of the game, the players probably weren’t tiring out nearly as quickly. Finally, they had been playing fairly well until right before that point, even building a six point lead, so with them not looking too tired, Coach Neal might not have felt a substitution was necessary. Regardless, I think it would have made sense for X to get more run in the second half after how well he did in the first half, which was justified further based on his play once he finally did get into the game, especially if that helped keep the starters fresh for the end of the game.
• At this point it seems pretty clear that the Lobos’ best, and maybe only chance at making the NCAA Tournament will be to win the conference tourney in March. (Sure, it’s possible that they still can earn an at-large bid, but that might literally require them to win out the rest of the conference season. It’s possible, in the sense that it’s not impossible, but it’s not something that I would put money on.) Because of that, the main thing that I hope to see out of the team as things go forward is constant improvement. I hope to see each player get better individually and I hope to see them get better at playing as a team. Despite a couple of disappointing performances, this team has a lot of talent and still hasn’t hit its peak. If it does reach its potential, we might get to see them cutting down some nets in Las Vegas in March.

Up Next

The Lobos get a full week off – because the Mountain West schedule is kind of dumb this year and somehow the Lobos ended up having both of their bye days before they even finished a third of the season – before they head to San Jose to take on the Spartans. San Jose State is not as woeful as they’ve been the past couple of years, but they’re still a team that the Lobos should beat.