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Nov. 12—There was no UCLA hangover for the California kid.
Tuesday night in the Pit wasn’t always pretty for the home team, and star center Nelly Junior Joseph was a non-factor due to foul trouble, but Lobos junior point guard Donovan Dent was his usual brilliant self with 25 points, 10 assists and no turnovers and helped ensure the outcome was never really in doubt in a 100-81 Lobos victory over Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
“Good win for our guys. I thought they really were ready to go,” said UNM Lobos coach Richard Pitino. “When you have a big win like UCLA, everybody’s telling them how great they are. Then you got another big game (coming this weekend against) St. John’s. I thought the mental approach was terrific to handle their business versus a team in Corpus Christi, who played really well at Purdue, blew their last opponent out.”
The Lobos improve to 3-0 on the season and will soon head to New York City to play No. 22 St. John’s on Sunday.
The Islanders (1-2), with three former UNM assistant coaches on their staff, came out strong and didn’t seem fazed by the announced Pit crowd of 11,106. TAMCC took a 9-7 lead on an Isaac Williams bucket with 15:41 left in the first half before the Lobos’ exerted their dominance.
With defense sparking the effort, UNM rattled off a 26-5 run over the next 7 minutes, 4 seconds to take a 33-14 lead.
In a game with 54 total fouls — 28 on TAMCC, 26 on UNM — flow was hard to come by, but Lobo scoring was not, thanks in large part to Dent.
“Obviously, so many fouls, which is very, very challenging,” Pitino said. “But we did a lot of good things. Donovan obviously passed the ball great. Kayde (Dotson) was very good off the bench, and so was Atiki (Ally Atiki). … I loved their approach today. I thought they played really hard.”
Junior Joseph, dominant in two wins last week and named the Mountain West Player of the Week on Monday, didn’t even attempt a shot until a made layup with 6:42 remaining in the game. He sat the bench much of the night,…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/mexico-hits-century-mark-big-045900570.html
Author : Albuquerque Journal, N.M.
Publish date : 2024-11-13 04:59:00
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