The Lobos put on a dominant second-half display in San Jose on Saturday to bust out of their two-game skid. Now, they’ll look to get a little win streak going when they take on the Air Force Falcons Wednesday night. Air Force is another team that has been struggling in conference play, but they offer some unique challenges that could make the game more interesting than it appears on paper.

A Little about Air Force

The Falcons are coached by Dave Pilipovich, now in his fifth season with the program, who might have one of the toughest coaching challenges in the country. For one, he has to find D-1 level players who are willing to go to a military academy for college, which is just a little different than the “standard” college experience. Beyond that, it’s not uncommon for players to decide to leave after their sophomore year, because that’s the last point that they can resign from the school and not be committed to serving in the Air Force for at least five years after graduation. That’s why they have 22(!) guys on their roster but only one senior and five juniors. Air Force tends to be at their best when they have a senior-laden team, guys who really understand the system and have developed into solid players. This year’s model isn’t really one of those Air Force teams.

They have used nine different starting lineups this season, but that’s a little misleading as there have been four constants in the lineup: senior post Zach Moer, junior forward Hayden Graham, junior guard Zach Kocur, and sophomore guard Trevor Lyons. Those four have only missed two starts between them and that appears to have been for minor injuries. Six other guys have filled the role of the fifth starter for the Falcons, but the most recent, and probable starter, is freshman guard Pervis Louder.

The two stars on the team are Graham and Lyons. Graham, at 6’5”, is nominally the starting four, but he’s definitely more of a wing. He’s currently the team’s leading scorer and rebounder, averaging 14.9 ppg and 6.6 rpg, and is shooting 46% from three point range. However, as is expected with their offense, he takes most of his shots closer to the basket, taking 8.5 two pointers per game and making 54.9% of them. Lyons, who is the younger brother of former Falcons star Michael Lyons, plays pretty similarly to his sibling. He is a solid three point shooter, making 37.7% of his attempts, but does most of his damage driving to the basket while looking to finish and to get fouled. The thing that his holding him back right now, compared to his brother, is that he isn’t as good at finishing or at shooting free throws. However, I wouldn’t be shocked if he ends up having a senior season like his older brother’s, where he lead the conference in scoring and was a first-team all-MW selection.

Moer, at 6’11” is the only Falcon standing taller than 6’8”, so he has been asked to hold down the interior despite being seldom-used in his few seasons on the team. He’s been doing alright in that role, averaging 9.6 points and 5.4 boards per game, but has struggled at times with foul trouble. That can be a major issue for the Falcons in games like this one, as they don’t have much depth behind him. Kocur, on the other hand, is a 6’3” guard who was one of the best players on the team last year but has taken a major step back this season. His three-point shooting has dropped from 47.5% (on a lot of attempts) to 31.8% (also on a lot of attempts), which has really reduced his effectiveness. I don’t know if it’s because they lost a couple of guys from last year who opened things up for him or if he’s been injured or what, but it’s been a surprise to see. I still wouldn’t leave him open, though. Louder is a 6’2” guard who only recently started seeing any playing time and has now found his way into the starting lineup. It’s been a limited sample, but it appears as though he plays similarly to Lyons in that he attacks the basket and looks to draw fouls. He’s also been a little prone to picking up fouls, so I would imagine that Cullen and Elijah could find themselves on the line a decent amount if he’s guarding them.

As a whole, maybe the biggest surprise about this Falcon’s team is how ineffective their offense has been this season. A huge part of that is that they haven’t shot the ball well as a group. They’re below average from the free throw line, from two-point range, and from deep, all of which feels unusual for what I think of when I think about an Air Force team. I do think that their relative inexperience plays a role in that, as the Princeton offense is pretty intricate and requires a really firm grasp of to be effective. It’s hard to really nail down even after a full season of running it. Still, it’s not hard to imagine that the offense will keep improving as the season goes on and, given that they’re a slightly-above-average defense, they could end up being a pain for whoever draws them in the MWC Tournament.

Scattered Game Thoughts

• I haven’t seen anything official, but by all accounts it appears as though Cullen will be back in action after missing the last game recovering from a concussion. It will be good to have him back, for sure, but it will be interesting if Jordan’s solid performance on Saturday will affect the minute distribution between the two of them. Cullen plays a lot of minutes, usually only coming out when he’s in foul trouble, and I can’t help but wonder if he would be better served getting a rest more regularly. I think that Jordan is starting to earn Coach Neal’s trust, so hopefully Noodles will feel comfortable playing Jordan more often to let Cullen take a breather so he can stay fresh the whole time. Cullen hasn’t been particularly efficient on offense this year, mostly due to his somewhat high turnover rate and his low two-point shooting, and maybe the minutes are affecting his offense. Having an option on the bench that Coach Neal has confidence in might help with that.
• Lobo Twitter was ablaze yesterday when it got out that Dave Rice, the now-former UNLV coach, was in town to hang out with the team for a couple of days. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, though, as Noodles mentioned that he’d be inviting Rice out to talk shop back when Rice “resigned” from UNLV. And by all accounts, that’s what’s going on. I actually really like the idea of Noodles bringing in a coach that he trusts to give him some honest evaluations of his team, if for no other reason than I think that it’s really easy for coaches at any level to develop blind spots about their team and they occasionally need someone to point them out. Who better than a guy who was preparing to play your team just a couple of weeks ago? Now, I’m sure that we all have our own ideas of what Coach Neal’s blind spots are right now (he should play this guy more, that guy less, run more of this type of offense, etc.) and some of those things might be completely correct. But there’s no way he’d listen to me, even if I knew exactly what needed to happen to take the team to the next level. He might listen to Dave Rice, though, and that could be a good thing.

Prediction

The Lobos should win this game, as Air Force doesn’t match up well with them and they don’t seem to have their offense working as well as they usually do. Still, that offense will probably still be confusing, as there are a lot of guys on the Lobos that haven’t seen it before, so there’s always the potential that the Falcons could catch the Lobos off guard. Even if that happens, I do think that the talent gap is too big between these teams for the Falcons to overcome, so I’ll pick the Lobos to win 75-64.

Game Info

Who: UNM Lobos (10-8, 3-2) vs. Air Force Falcons (10-10, 1-6)

Where: The Pit, Albuquerque, NM

When: Wednesday, January 27, 2016 at 7:05pm MT

Radio: 770 KKOB

TV: Root Sports