In the first game of their two-game Colorado road trip, the Lobos defense collapsed in the second half against the home version of Air Force, eventually falling 76-72. That now leaves them needing to pick up a win against Colorado State in Ft. Collins to keep their second-place position in the conference standings.

Game Recap

I mentioned in our game preview that although Air Force isn’t a great team in general, at home they become a completely different animal, particularly with gains on defense. That looked to hold true at the beginning of the game, as the Lobos weren’t able to get anything going for the first several minutes. That allowed Air Force to jump out to an early 10-3 game to prove that this game wasn’t going to be a blowout like it was in Albuquerque. A couple of Elijah Brown threes cut the lead to one, but the offense never really picked up. At the end of the half, the Lobos were shooting 40% from the field, had 10 turnovers, and had only scored 31 points. Luckily, their defense was able to keep them in the game, forcing Air Force to shoot only 39.3% from the field, including 16.7% from three, and holding them to just 29 points.

The second half started out much the same way as the first, with Air Force going on a 10-3 run. The Lobos then remembered that they had a big advantage on the interior that goes by the name Tim Williams, who scored 7 points during an 11-1 Lobo run in which all of the points were scored on either free throws or in the paint. In fact, they were able to stretch that out to a 19-5 run to put them up 53-44, with only an Anthony Mathis three to cap off the scoring coming from somewhere besides the paint or the charity stripe. They then had this sequence over the next 3+ minutes: missed three, missed three, missed jumper, missed three, turnover, turnover, missed three. That stretch allowed Air Force to cut the lead to 1 and regain all of the momentum. From that point on, rather than continuing to take advantage on the interior, the Lobos instead only took two more shots from inside the paint (three, if you count the one that Williams was fouled on), while they took 10 threes (11, if you count the one EB was fouled on).

Still, I’m not sure that was the reason they lost. After all, of those 10 threes they took, they made four of them, which is pretty good. What was really the problem was the defense completely collapsed. The Lobos had only allowed 48 points in the first 30 minutes, which is good for a 64 point pace, but they allowed 28 points in the final 10 minutes, which is a ridiculous 112 point pace. That’s just not going to cut it against anyone. I don’t know if it was that the team relaxed too much after their big run, if they started to get tired, if Air Force found something to take advantage of that the Lobos weren’t able to adjust for because they were almost out of timeouts, or some combination of the above, but the end of the game gave me some flashbacks to the Boise game on Wednesday. Except this time, the Lobos were on the wrong end of the stick.

Players of the Game

For each game, I’m choosing my top three players of the game and giving them points (3 for first, 2 for second, and 1 for third). We’ll keep track of the points all season.

1. Elijah Brown (54 points on the season): Another great game from EB in a season full of them. This game marks Elijah’s fifth time to reach the 30-point plateau this season, which, interestingly enough, have all come away from Albuquerque. In fact, he’s averaging 23.8 ppg on the road/neutral compared to 19 ppg at home. Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but I get the sense that EB loves to shut opposing fans up.
2. Tim Williams (56 points on the season): Once again, a team sold out defensively to try to stop Tim. Once again, he was able to dominate in spite of that. Even while being swarmed by three or four Falcons for most of his touches, he was still able to put up a 17 point, 13 rebound performance. The Lobos have been in a bit of a shooting slump as a team recently, so I’d expect teams to continue to collapse on him defensively until the Lobos prove that they can hit outside shots with enough consistently to make that seem like a bad idea. If and when that happens, I’d expect Tim to have another monster game.
3. Sam Logwood (10 points on the season): I went back and forth on who should take this third slot, but Sam ultimately won out. There were times where he remembered that he is bigger, faster, stronger, and more explosive than anyone on the Air Force team, and he was able to take advantage of that for rebounds and for drawing some fouls. I’d like to see him play like that more regularly, but I can understand why he feels like he needs to defer to Tim and Elijah sometimes. Hopefully whatever he did to tweak his shoulder isn’t going to affect him too much in the long run, as we’re going to need him playing at a high level for the team to have a successful home stretch.

Scattered Thoughts

• Air Force decided to pack the paint and tempt the Lobos to shoot threes, and boy did the Lobos oblige. The Lobos shot 37 threes in the game, which is easily a season-high. Looking back at the box score, EB and Cullen combined for 27 of those attempts, which Elijah going 7-17 (41%) and Cullen going 2-10 (20%). EB’s 7-17 is actually pretty justifiable, especially when you consider two of those misses game at the end of the game when the Lobos were desperate, but Cullen’s 2-10 is clearly less than ideal. Of course, he is a good three-point shooter, did start out 2-4, and had some good looks in this game, they just weren’t falling. However, the Lobos have a big size and athleticism advantage against Air Force, so the best way to take advantage of that would have been to go hard to the rim, instead of settling for jumpers. I think that they knew that, it’s just hard for a shooter to turn down a good look.
  As for the other three point attempts, I’m pretty okay with Sam taking a couple, Dane taking a few, Anthony taking a few, X taking one, and Jacobs taking one. None of those seem like unreasonable amounts to me. In fact, I’m starting to think that if Jacobs is going to keep seeing a decent chunk of playing time, he needs to be more willing to shoot the occasional three. It seems like his shot has improved this year – and not just because he’s now 3-3 on the season, it actually looks better – so if that’s the case, he needs to make teams respect him on the perimeter. Otherwise, they just sag off of him and make it harder to get the ball in to Tim W.
• Late in the second half during one of the media timeouts, Air Force was awarded an extra point, which was explained by them giving them a point on a three that was called a two-pointer. The broadcast said that it was a Jacob Van shot, but Geoff Grammer said today that it came on a Hayden Graham jumper with 3:43 left in the game (tweet 1, tweet 2). Looking back at it, that jumper didn’t look like it would have been a three in a high school game, so I don’t know what the deal was there. All in all, I don’t think that was the reason the Lobos lost, as there are plenty of other reasons that happened, but it might just be another MWC officiating mistake in a season full of them.

Up Next

The Lobos head to Ft. Collins to take on the 6-8 Colorado St. Rams tomorrow. Like Air Force, CSU is a tough team to beat when their at home, even in their down years. The Lobos will need to make sure that they put this game against Air Force behind them so they can play to their full potential against the Rams.