New Mexico’s Chad Adams, left, Tony Snell (21) and their teammates had high hopes of advancing deep into this year’s Big Dance. But their early loss to Harvard provided a sting that’s probably going to last for a while. (RICK BOWMER/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)

As he watched the final seconds tick off the clock Thursday night, the score line on his TV screen reading “Harvard 68, New Mexico 62,” John Whisenant couldn’t help reminiscing.

But then, perhaps reminiscing is the wrong word. It was by no means a pleasant memory that invaded his thoughts.

Some 35 years before, Whisenant was the lead assistant coach on a New Mexico team that, like this year’s Lobos, entered its first NCAA Tournament game as a huge favorite and with neon-bright prospects of advancing far into the Big Dance – though the tournament wouldn’t be called that for years to come.

And, like the 2012-13 Lobos, Whisenant’s team would exit the tournament after a gut-punch defeat in that first game. The final score in Tempe, Ariz.: Cal State-Fullerton 90, New Mexico 85.

John Whisenant, left, an aide to coach Norm Ellenberger, center, in 1978, says that year’s tourney defeat was worse than the 2013 loss to Harvard. (JOURNAL FILE)

Whisenant agrees there are marked similarities between the two situations: the pregame euphoria, the postgame shock, the half-sad, half-angry fallout.

This was New Mexico’s 12th NCAA Tournament appearance since 1978, and certainly not the first disappointing early loss.

Not since ’78, though, have high expectations been so dramatically – or should that be traumatically? – dashed.

“Yeah, I empathized with everybody,” Whisenant says of his reaction to the Harvard loss. “The fans, the players, the coaching staff.

“I think for the first time since Cal State-Fullerton we had the emotion back. It’s disappointing, and I’m sure everybody would like to have a do-over. But they don’t really allow that in basketball.”

For New York real-estate lawyer Kurt Roth, a 1977 UNM graduate and a devoted fan, the 1978 and 2013 Lobos got him coming and going.

Friday, after having watched the stunning loss to Harvard in Salt Lake City, Roth scrambled to rearrange his travel plans. Having expected to see the Lobos play Arizona on Saturday, he finally was able to arrange a red-eye flight back to New York.

Some 35 years before, less than a year out of school and working in Washington, D.C., Roth had planned the first vacation from his new job around the 1978 NCAA Tournament West Regional at the Pit. He had every confidence that his beloved, 24-3, fourth-ranked Lobos, who needed only to beat lightly regarded Fullerton to advance to play at home in the regional, would meet him there.

Uh, no.

Roth, then 23, still made the 1,900-mile journey by car. But getting there was less than half the fun it might have been, with no Lobos to look forward to.

“Talk about torture,” he says.

New Mexico’s Marvin Johnson scored 15 points in a team-high 35 minutes in the Lobos’ loss in Tempe, Ariz.
(JOURNAL FILE)

Since the Lobos’ loss to Harvard, many have drawn the obvious comparison to 1978 on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Roth the fan, like Whisenant the coach, acknowledges the comparison is valid.

But coach and fan also agree that the Cal State-Fullerton loss remains the granddaddy disaster of them all.

As good as the 2012-13 Lobos were, the 1977-78 team was better.

The Lobos had ripped through Western Athletic Conference play with a 13-1 record. They led the nation in scoring, with an average of 98 points per game.

Guard Michael Cooper, among the best all-around players ever to wear a New Mexico uniform, would go on to a 13-year career in the NBA. Forward Marvin “Automatic” Johnson’s 24-point scoring average probably would have been three to four points higher, had there been a 3-point line at the time.

Even so, many felt 6-foot-8 swingman Willie Howard was the team’s most talented player. Jimmy Allen, 6-8, and Wil Smiley, 6-10, controlled the lane. Point guard Russell Saunders was breathtakingly quick; 6-6 forward Phil Abney’s all-around talents gave head coach Norm Ellenberger the luxury of bringing the explosive Howard off the bench.

Most encouraging of all, perhaps, was the happy coincidence of the West Regional being scheduled for Albuquerque. At the time, there was no rule preventing the Lobos from playing there; all they had to do was beat Fullerton.

At the time, only 32 teams made the tournament field. A win in Tempe and two more in Albuquerque, and New Mexico would be headed for the Final Four in St. Louis.

“In that town (Albuquerque), in that gym (the Pit), that would have been the ultimate Lobo experience,” Roth says. “… As ugly as (the Harvard loss) was, I just don’t think it has the same impact on what could have been.”

Michael Cooper, who went on to fame with the Lakers, said after the loss to Fullerton: “It’s like somebody close to us had died.” (JOURNAL FILE)

While still coaching the Lobos, Whisenant already was well into an Albuquerque commercial real-estate career. He resigned from Ellenberger’s staff after the 1978-79 season. He since has coached in the WNBA and men’s minor-league professional basketball, but always maintained his other business interests.

Cal State-Fullerton, he says, had a lot to do with that.

“It was just one of those things,” he says, “that made me realize I didn’t want to be a career coach. It’s too painful when things like this happen.”

Thursday in Salt Lake City, the pain set in early. The Lobos missed 10 of their first 11 shots from the field and trailed throughout the first half.

Though they caught Harvard in the second half and led 53-52 with 6 minutes, 28 seconds left, the Lobos ultimately could not overcome the cold shooting – 37.5 percent in this game – that had plagued them all year.

Cold shooting was not a problem for the ’77-78 Lobos in Tempe. They made 37 of 72 shots from the field against Fullerton.

Problem was, the Titans were 36-of-58, a mind-boggling 61 percent, and had a 18-to-11 advantage at the foul line.

Whisenant, in particular, remembers the 10-of-17 shooting of Titans forward Kevin Heenan, who wore goggles to protect an injured eye.

“They made some shots,” Whisenant says, “and I remember their 6-4 guy with long blond hair and big thick glasses (Heenan) just making every shot from everywhere.”

The Lobos led comfortably through most of the first half, but the lead had shrunk to six, 44-38, at halftime. After the Titans went ahead, the Lobos tied the score at 83 late in the game. But a costly turnover and missed shots down the stretch doomed UNM as some 3,000 Lobo fans, having made the trip to Tempe, looked on in disbelief.

Coach Steve Alford, center, and his Lobos suffered one of the most disappointing losses in school history when they were beaten by 14th-seeded Harvard on Thursday in NCAA Tournament play in Salt Lake City. (CHRIS DETRICk/SALT LAKE TRIBUNE)

The players, according to the following day’s Albuquerque Journal, found it equally hard to believe.

“It’s like somebody close to us had died,” Cooper said.

Fan reaction, in those pre-Twitter days, was hard to gauge.

The day after, the Journal sent a reporter to a couple of local watering holes. At Ned’s El Portal, one of Ellenberger’s favorite haunts, folks generally were supportive. But at Ma Belle’s, a strip bar, it was noted that one regular customer who normally stuck to soda water and lime had suddenly switched to the hard stuff.

A Ma Belle’s female employee, not a stripper, made her displeasure known.

“If you’re up by 12 and you lose by four (actually, five), what do you call it?” she asked.

It was not reported whether she then put two hands around her throat.

Whisenant says he doesn’t recall a huge negative reaction.

“It wasn’t like they were hissing at us or throwing mudballs or anything like that,” he says. “But I think they felt much like the fans probably feel today.”

Cyberspace, Roth notes, has changed everything in that regard. But, this too, he adds, shall pass.

“This thing went global because it was Harvard and it was disgusting,” Roth says. “But it’s pretty much (already gone).”

Soon enough, in the Cal State-Fullerton aftermath, Ellenberger was gone as well.

The ’77-78 Lobos were a senior-dominated team, and UNM would go 19-10 with a first-round NIT loss the following season. In December 1979, Ellenberger was fired as the Lobogate scandal brought the program to its knees.

Ellenberger was convicted of charges of fraud but served no time in prison. Whisenant was acquitted of similar charges.

Whisenant and Roth both envision a far brighter future for Alford’s program.

“I’ve turned into a fan,” said Whisenant, who last spring left his most recent coaching job with the WNBA’s New York Liberty. “I think coach Alford and (associate head coach Craig Neal) and that staff have just done an awesome job coaching this team.

“The good thing is, we’ve got a team with all of those players returning and the coaching staff returning, and we just have to keep saying we’ve got another year.”

Roth, hooked on Lobo basketball since he first saw a game in the Pit in 1973, frequently travels to UNM road games and has come to know the players and coaches well.

The bitterness expressed by many Lobo fans in the Harvard aftermath, he says, is foreign to him.

“It’s still college basketball,” he says. “It sometimes feels like life or death, but it’s just kids representing my school. … It’s an easy program to root for.”

— This article appeared on page D1 of the Albuquerque Journal