The Lobos were given a scare yesterday against New Mexico State, finding themselves down 15 early in the second half before a furious comeback allowed them to walk away with a 38-29 victory. The Lobos have now won four straight match-ups against the Aggies in the Rio Grande Rivalry, which also means that Coach Davie has never lost a game to the team down south. The win also improves the Lobos to 3-2 on the season, putting them halfway towards bowl eligibility.

The game started out just about as poorly as the Lobos could have expected, when on NMSU’s first possession, RB Larry Rose III took a hand-off on 3^rd and 10 and ran for a 63 yard touchdown. However, the Lobos were able to answer right back with a Lamar Jordan 70 yard touchdown run and then seemingly take control of the game when Lee Crosby forced and recovered an Aggie fumble for another touchdown. For the rest of the half, the Lobos fell apart. Rose found another big hole on a third down play, leading to a 67 yard touchdown, and then another big hole on a second down play for a 51 yard touchdown. All in all, Rose had 236 yards and three touchdowns in the first half alone, making me look up what was the most yards rushed for in a game by a single player against the Lobos (325, by TCU’s Andre Davis in 1994). At that point, it seemed like a certainty that he was going to hit that mark (Spoiler Alert: He didn’t. He ended up with only 24 yards in the second half). For the Lobos, offensively, their remaining possessions were either forgettable or disappointing. At halftime, the Lobos were down 26-14 and certainly didn’t inspire any confidence that they were going to pull it together.

The second half also started out with a thud, when Carlos Wiggins fumbled the opening kickoff, which gave the Aggies the ball on the UNM 34 with the chance to basically put the game away with a touchdown. Unfortunately for the Aggies, the Lobo defense came out to play in the second half. They held the Aggies to a field goal on that possession and then shut them out for the rest of the game. In fact, NMSU didn’t cross midfield again after that possession. Wiggins atoned for his fumble on his next opportunity, returning the kickoff to the Aggie 40 yard line, giving the Lobos a great opportunity to cut into the lead. Keeping the ball mostly on the ground, the Lobos were able to go the 40 yards they needed, scoring a touchdown on a 6 yard run by Richard McQuarley. After a poor punt by the Aggies, which gave the Lobos great field position again, Jhurell Pressley put together a highlight run, going 32 yards for a touchdown, which tied the game at 29. The Lobos then managed another touchdown on a drive that entirely consisted of two explosive runs, including a 40 yarder by Jordan and a 36 yard touchdown run by Teriyon Gibson. The Lobos finished up their scoring by getting a safety towards the end of the fourth quarter, which put the game out of reach.

Clearly, if you had watched only half of this game, you would have left feeling entirely different about the Lobos depending on which half you saw. If you saw the first half, you would have seen a defense that was prone to making mistakes, which allowed the Aggies to capitalize with huge plays, and an offense that was having a hard time getting going. If you watched the second half, you would have seen a suffocating defense that kept giving the offense short fields to work with and an offense that was able to have both sustained drives and explosive plays. That basically means that it’s hard to know what to make out of this game. On one hand, the Lobos played so poorly in the first half that it looked like they were going to get blown out at home by a bad football team. On the other hand, they showed the ability to regroup from a bad start to come back and pull out a victory. Still, a win’s a win, so it’s hard to complain too much about the result, especially in a rivalry game.

Aside from those lapses in the first half that allowed for Rose’s huge touchdown runs, I though that the defense looked really good. They were able to get seven sacks, including a safety, and they caused three turnovers. It seems clear to me that this is a much better defense than last year and they should keep getting better as the season goes on. They will certainly need to, as the schedule is going to start getting harder than it has been the last couple of weeks. If they can cut down on the silly mistakes, then they should be good enough to give the Lobos a chance to win in most of the remaining games.

The Lobo offense continued their focus on running the ball, attempting 61 carries to only 17 passes even though they were down for a good chunk of the game. This resulted in 401 rushing yards, mostly coming from the trio of Jordan, Pressley, and Gibson. All three of them were able to put together big runs that resulted in touchdowns, which, when that happens, makes the Lobo offense really dangerous. Jordan didn’t have a great first half, and didn’t throw the ball particularly well (going 5/17 for 45 yards and an interception), so credit to Coach Davie for sticking with Jordan throughout that. I don’t think that yanking him out of the game would have really helped much in this game and it certainly wouldn’t have helped his confidence going forward in the season.

Next week will be a good measuring stick for the Lobos, as the past two weeks they have been playing teams from the lower end of the FBS. Nevada is certainly a tougher team and playing on the road will be difficult, but I think that the Lobos still stand a good chance against them.