Kirk finished
with 16 points
and eight rebounds and shot a perfect 8 of 8 from the free throw
line to lead
the team coming off the bench.
“It was great
for Alex to
get to moving around again," said head coach Steve Alford. "He hadn't played a game in nearly
600 days. That's
not easy. That why I wish we had him for both exhibition games,
but I was
really pleased with what we saw out of him today. He and Cam
were making free
throws, they're rebounding the basketball, they're running the
floor and that's
what we need them to do.”
The Lobos shot
a smoking 23
of 26 from the free throw line in the first half, only to cool
off to 12 of 22
in the second half as the Cowboys resorted to fouling to turn the fluid
pace of the first half into a stagger in the second half. NMHU
finished with 33
personal fouls for the game and three players fouling out.
“All in all, I
was pretty
pleased,” said head coach Steve Alford. “We didn't make the foul
shot in the
second half so when you have that many fouls and you're not
making foul shots,
it makes for a really sloppy half. So that's where the
sloppiness came in. I
thought we took care of the ball pretty well, but it was a wild
game. It gives
us a little bit of tape to watch, but we'll turn our attention
immediately to
Davidson.”
New Mexico (2-0
exhibition)
finished with six players in double figures as forwards Cameron Bairstow and
Chad Adams added 14 points and 7 rebounds and 11 points and 4
rebounds
respectively and Kendall Williams added 12 points and 6
rebounds, Tony Snell
added 11 points and 5 rebounds and Hugh Greenwood tallied 10
points and 6
rebounds. The Lobos outrebounded NMHU 55 to 36, puling in 37
defensive rebounds
off long misses from the Cowboys, who pushed up 37 3-point
shots, hitting just
12 for a 32% performance.
“That
(rebounding) is an
emphasis (for our guards,)” said Greenwood. “To have two bigs
in, that has been
an emphasis for us since day one. We need to rebound and I think
everyone is
buying in.”
UNM opened the
game on an
16-5 run but Highlands cut the lead to 22-17 on 3-pointer by
Lavell McDaded
with 9:54 left in the 1st half. But the Lobos responded UNM with
a 26-3 run
over the next six minutes to secure a 48-20 lead. New Mexico led
58-32 at the
half.
Highlands came
out determined
to disrupt the flow of the game in the second half, pilling on
the fouls on the
defensive end while continuing to pepper away from long range on
the offensive
end. The tactic helped them cut the Lobo lead by 7 points as
NMHU closed to
65-44 at the 13:17 mark on a trey by Ray Riley. The Cowboys cut
the lead all
the way down to 17 at 82-65 with just over five minutes left but
got no closer.
“We lost our
concentration
(in the second half),” said Greenwood. “The things at the foul
line and there
was some turnovers. We couldn’t run. We were capitalizing that
in the first
half and getting stops. That’s what we do best.
“They were
scoring and it
was stopping our transition,” said Greenwood. “That was the main
issue. We
couldn’t go out and run like we normally do in the first half.
We put together
a great first half. We just have to do that for 40 minutes.”
Guard Stuart
Sullivan score
a game-high 19 points on 7 of 13 shooting while Mannie Cass and
Lavell McDade
added 10 points each for Highlands. The Cowboys shot just 7 free
throws on the
night, making 4 and were outscored 44-20 in the paint and 16-6
on second chance
points.
New Mexico now
begins
preparing for a midnight game against Davidson as part of ESPN’s
24 Hours of
Hoops next Monday night. Tip off at The Pit is 11:59 am.