So what exactly will Saturday’s embarrassing loss to the South Dakota State Jackrabbits mean for the No. 16 New Mexico Lobos?

“Hopefully lessons will be learned,” coach Steve Alford said.

Time will tell whether that happens as the long-term effects of the 70-65 loss won’t be known for some time.

	Thursday No. 16 New Mexico at No. 11 Cincinnati, 7 p.m., ESPN2, 770 AM

The Lobos could chalk up Saturday’s loss to that wonderful made-up sports term “trap game” that allows teams to casually dismiss the factors that led to a loss.

Saturday’s game does fit the classic signs:

♦ UNM had just played back-to-back emotional rivalry games.

♦ The Christmas break is on us, adding to some distractions.

♦ The team’s next three games are as tough a stretch as any this season – at No. 11 Cincinnati (12-0), at St. Louis (8-3) and vs. No. 21 UNLV (11-1) to open Mountain West play.

Stuck in between all of it was a South Dakota State team that had to bus 1,220 miles from Nashville just to get to the game and seemingly had no chance of walking out of the Pit with a win.

“If that’s what happened,” Alford said of the trap game excuse, “that’s a really soft mentality.”

UNM’s Demetrius Walker, right, reacts to the loss to South Dakota State in the Pit on Saturday. (MARLA BROSE/JOURNAL)

A soft mentality wouldn’t fit the description Alford gave this team just last week when asked about their identity. After the NMSU win but before the South Dakota State loss, Alford called these Lobos “tough minded” and praised their ability to focus on every game and adapt to their opponent.

Excuses, Alford has said, aren’t what this team is about. How they move forward from Saturday’s loss will tell whether that’s true.

The more immediate fallout from the loss, and one the team actually can’t control at this point, will be when the Lobos drop in today’s updated Associated Press and USA Today coaches Top 25 polls.

UNM was ranked No. 16 in the AP poll this past week and No. 17 in the coaches poll.

Only one team ranked No. 17 through 25 in the AP poll also lost this week (No. 23 North Carolina lost 85-67 to Texas on Wednesday). Of the top four teams in the “others receiving votes” category – Oregon, Pittsburgh, Kentucky and Kansas State – only Oregon lost.

That puts the Lobos at risk of a big drop, though at 12-1 with an RPI of 12 as of Sunday, it is hard to imagine UNM would drop all the way out of the poll.

GENERAL ON THE CALL: Alford’s former coach and college basketball Hall of Famer Bobby Knight, along with John Saunders, are scheduled to be the broadcast team on ESPN2 for Thursday night’s Lobos vs. Bearcats game in Cincinnati’s Fifth Third Arena.

FRESH STARTS: With Kendall Williams and Chad Adams being benched to start Saturday’s game against South Dakota State, one of the two bench players inserted into the starting lineup was Cleveland “Pancake” Thomas, a true freshman from Louisiana.

He was the ninth player to make a start for UNM this season and made this the fifth of Alford’s six seasons in which at least one freshman started a game.

The only season an Alford-coached Lobos team didn’t start a freshman was the 30-win 2009-10 campaign in which the Lobos used the same starting lineup for all 35 games.

The number of freshman starts in a season under Alford:

♦ 2007-08, 45 games started (Dairese Gary 28, Jonathan Wills 17)

♦ 2008-09, 36 (Phillip McDonald 33, A.J. Hardeman 2, Will Brown 1)

♦ 2009-10, 0

♦ 2010-11, 66 (Kendall Williams 34, Alex Kirk 21, Tony Snell 10, Cameron Bairstow 1)

♦ 2011-12, 29 (Hugh Greenwood 29)

♦ 2012-13, 1 (Cleveland Thomas 1)

SUMMIT LEAGUE JINX: UNM has had four 12-0 starts in program history, with one of those extending to 17-0 before a loss.

The last two 12-0 starts for UNM saw the team’s undefeated season end in Game 13 to a team from the Summit League – Saturday it was South Dakota State knocking off the Lobos 70-65 in the Pit, and in 2009 it was Oral Roberts handing the Lobos loss No. 1 on their season, 75-66, in Tulsa, Okla.

The team doesn’t have another Summit League team on the schedule this season.

The Arizona Wildcats ended UNM’s undefeated seasons in Tucson in the program’s other two 12-0 starts – in the 1973-74 season and the 1967-68 season when the Lobos actually started 17-0.

The team’s three previous 12-0 starts led to league championship seasons and NCAA Tournament berths.

LOBOS LINKS: Roster | Schedule/Results | Geoff Grammer’s blog

— This article appeared on page B1 of the Albuquerque Journal