Lobos wake up in second half, thump Grambling State

For 20 minutes, the Lobos appeared to still be in a New York state of mind.

But the boys from the Land of Mañana eventually realized they were back home and went on an 11-0 run to start the second half to pull away from Grambling State in the Pit on Thursday.

Donovan Dent had 22 points and eight assists and the Lobos beat the Tigers 80-58 in front of an announced crowd of 10,992.

“Yeah, coach got on us pretty, pretty bad (at halftime),” Lobo guard Braden Appelhans said after the game. “We weren’t playing hard, obviously. No effort. So he yelled at us. And then, second half we came out and played way better.”

The Lobos improved to 4-1 and shook off the sting of an 85-71 loss to No. 22 St. John’s on Sunday in Madison Square Garden.

It took awhile for UNM to shake loose from the Tigers (1-3) on Thursday.

Grambling led 10-7 at the 11:46 mark in the first half. To that point, the Lobos had seven turnovers and missed four of five 3-point shot attempts in their first 12 possessions.

While it got somewhat better for the rest of the opening half — the Lobos went to the locker room up 30-26 — the halftime stat sheet isn’t one the team will frame.

UNM ended the first half with 10 turnovers and shot 2-of-10 from the 3-point line.

To start the second half, it was a new team.

In the second half, UNM had just six turnovers (16 total for the game) and hit 5-of-8 from the three-point line (7-of-18 for the game for 38.9%).

“Yeah, I told them at halftime to make the threes. Stop missing them. And it worked,” Pitino joked. “No, I mean we’ve got to be able to knock down the 3. ... We got to stretch the defense.”

UNM scored the first 11 points out of the locker room, including a pair of Dent 3-pointers and scored seven points off three Tigers turnovers.

UNM ended with 25 points off 22 Grambling State turnovers.

“We’ve done a really good job of turning teams over, and we’ve had active hands,” Pitino said. “We’ve gotten deflections. We’ve done some good things there, so that’s been pretty consistent with our defense. So that’s always going to be, hopefully, kind of a core principle of our defense — disrupting the ball.”

Dent, who has been nursing a left knee injury for a month, finished 7-of-13 shooting (2-of-2 from 3-point range) and he was 6-of-8 at the free throw line. He also had two of UNM’s nine blocked shots and a steal.

Like the team he leads, his first half and his second half looked very different.

“He said it was his knee,” Pitino said of Dent’s slow start. “I talked to him at halftime and said, ‘Either you’re hurt or you got to play harder.’ And I think a little bit of it is he’s just not really comfortable with (the injury) right now. He had a sleeve on it (Dent went to the team bench and frustratingly took the protective sleeve off his knee in the first 10 minutes of the game), but I think there was a fear, a little bit of, ‘Can I push myself with my knee?’ And he kind of mentally got over it and was way better in the second half.”

Tru Washington had 15 points and five of UNM’s 14 steals, the fourth time this season the Lobos have had double-digit steals and the second time in five games Washington has had at least five.

Mustapha Amzil was the other Lobo to score in double figures. He had an active 10 points, nine rebounds, two blocks and two steals while Nelly Junior Joseph had seven points and 11 rebounds.

C.J. Noland, in his first start of the season, finished with eight points and three steals.

Appelhans came off the bench to score six points and a foot-on-the-line 2-pointer in the second half was his first attempt of the season inside the arc.

P.J. Eason scored 11, the only Tiger in double-figures.

Geoff Grammer's live pregame show is available on his X account or on the Journal's YouTube page.

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UNM Lobos beat Grambling State Tigers: Photos