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Grammer: Friday night is the 1,000th Lobo game in the Pit. Here are the 10 best.
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There have been 999 Lobo men’s basketball games played in that well-know arena situated 37 feet into the New Mexico earth in southeast Albuquerque.
Nearly a quarter of those games (226 to be exact) in the Pit have been coached by three of the men that will be on the sidelines in Game 1,000 on Friday night when Nevada — coached by Steve Alford (103 Pit games as UNM’s coach) and assisted by Craig Neal (61 Pit games as UNM’s coach) — takes on UNM, coached by Richard Pitino (62 Pit games, so far).
Frankly, none of them care if Game 1,000 in the Pit is considered one of the best ever in the iconic arena, they just want a win. And, frankly, Nevada (8-6, 0-3 Mountain West) really, REALLY, needs one, while the Lobos (11-3, 3-0 MW) always want to perform well in front of their home fans.
But, while Friday features two teams willing to take boring wins, that's not going to cut it for this column.
Here I take a stab at compiling my list of the Top 10 best Lobo men’s basketball games ever played in the Pit, put together with an assist from the Journal’s 2016 coverage of the Pit’s 50th anniversary that, while not having a best men's hoops game list, did list a few of the very best played there.
Again, these are Lobo men’s basketball games. Not women’s games, high school championships, NBA exhibitions or other college games like that one you may have heard of in 1983 that finished with a coach frantically running in circles trying to find someone to hug.
Missing might be some championship-clinchers you feel were important or games with milestone moments, record-setting performances, heck, there's even a shocking 27-point Lobos win over a previously undefeated No. 6 Nevada team in 2019 that didn’t make the cut.
Why? For this list, I went with good old fashioned nail-biting, lose-your-voice, heart-pounding type games.
And they weren’t all selected wearing cherry-red-tinted glasses, either. Fair warning, the Lobos lost some of these...
Geoff Grammer’s Top 10 Lobo games in the Pit
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1. UNM 61, No. 1 Arizona 59 (Jan. 2, 1988)
Lobo Hunter Greene, battling a fever, blocked Sean Elliott’s 3-point shot at the buzzer to seal it. UNM jumped to a 25-9 lead in the first 10 minutes as fans danced carrying “Pit Power” signs. But by the final minutes, the talented Wildcats had the game within reach and the ball in the hands of their star wing in the final seconds, trailing 61-59.
Wrote Journal great Rick Wright for the following day’s Journal: “Sean Elliott, Arizona’s brilliant junior forward, had the ball on the ‘Cats’ last possession. As he went up for a 3-pointer, Greene launched his fever-weakened body high enough to block the shot cleanly.”
Rob Loeffel and Luc Longley carried the Lobos coach Gary Colson off the floor as fans rushed the court.
One of the stories from that game, recalled in a 2020 Journal feature by Arizona freshman and former Pac-12 Network announce Matt Muehlebach, epitomizes the heart of Lobo fandom as well as anything:
“I never saw it, but I remember after the game somebody said there had been a fan that had a heart attack and refused to leave. What I remember hearing was they had gotten him up to the top somewhere (to the concourse level) and he was on a gurney or something like that. They got him stabilized, but then he didn’t want to leave. He had a heart attack and wanted to see the end of the game.”
2. UNM 77, No. 3 Utah 74 (Feb. 1, 1998)
The game, televised nationally by ABC, featured unbeaten Utah against the Lobos, who had a 37-game home winning streak. Folks in Utah refer to it as “The mugging.”
With 59 seconds left, Lobo Royce Olney collided with Ute Andre Miller, hitting him in the back of the head and causing him to turn the ball over. Olney grabbed it and nailed a 3-pointer to cut Utah’s lead to 73-72. He hit another 3 with 4.6 seconds left that was the game-winner.
“You can’t explain what Royce can do,” Lobo Clayton Shields said. “He has no conscience. He’s got that fire in him.”
3. UNM 68, NMSU 66 (Feb. 1, 1969)
Petie Gibson’s 25-foot shot at the buzzer stunned the Aggies. UNM coach Bob King drew up a play for Ron Becker, but the Aggies had him covered. As Gibson took his shot, King jumped from the bench, leaving a baseball-sized bruise on assistant Norm Ellenberger’s side, as he yelled “It’s going in!”
“I didn’t think it was going to go in,” Gibson later said.
4. UNM 104, Fresno State 99 3OT (March 8, 1996, WAC Tournament semifinals)
Pick your moment. There were plenty. UNM’s Charles Smith scored three of his program-record 1,993 points in a Lobo jersey after being fouled on a 3-point attempt with 3 seconds left in the second overtime and his team down 92-89. “Spider” hit all three free throws to force the third extra period.
Smith finished with 19 points, Clayton Shields added 19 and 14 rebounds and freshman Kenny Thomas had 17 points.
“This is the most dramatic Lobo game I’ve been involved in,” UNM coach Dave Bliss said. “This was like one of those old TV episodes where each week they left you hanging on the edge of a cliff.”
“This is one of the toughest losses I’ve ever suffered,” Fresno State coach Jerry Tarkanian said. “God, it hurts. Our guys fought so hard, and I thought we had this game.”
5. UTEP 71, UNM 70 OT (Jan. 25, 1986)
The Cup Game.
With the Lobos leading 70-69 with two seconds left, Miner Wayne Campbell stepped to the foul line for a one-and-one free throw. As he shot, a paper cup thrown by a fan sailed in front of his face, and the shot was no good. Official Jimmy Clarke awarded him a do-over, and Campbell made both foul shots to win it. They were his only two points of the game.
“I was shocked,” said UNM coach Gary Colson, who called it the toughest loss of his career.
On January 25, 1986, the UTEP Miners defeated the New Mexico Lobos 71-70 on last second, 2nd chance free throws due to a UNM fan throwing a paper cup to distract Wayne Campbell from making a one and one.
With :02 seconds left in the game and UTEP down 70-69, Campbell was fouled after getting an offensive rebound from a last second shot by Juden Smith. Campbell stepped to the line to shoot one-and-one. He missed the front end of the one-and-one; however, the referee called fan interference due to a paper cup being thrown from the stands.
Campbell made both 2nd chance free throws and the Miners won the game. This is a game that stays in the memory of all Miner and Lobos fans and will always be documented in the annals of the UTEP and UNM basketball rivalry.
6. No. 23 UNM 76, No. 12 BYU 72 (Jan. 27, 2010)
Dairese Gary drew the unenviable task of guarding one of college basketball’s all-time great scorers, Jimmer Fredette. While the matchup was supposed to be about slowing Fredette down in any way possible (Fredette did end up with 27 points and seven assists), Gary stole the show on the offensive end, scoring 25 points, hitting six free throws in the final 1:12 to seal the deal in what some insist was one of the loudest games in the arena’s history, possibly due in part to unusual acoustics created by the plastic tarps and boarded up walls around the concourse while the Pit was under renovation.
“Man, that was ridiculous,” Gary said. “I loved it. It was so loud ... we had to stand by each other and you still couldn’t hear each other. It felt like the floor was rumbling.”
“Jimmer Fredette’s a very special player,” Steve Alford said. “But I wouldn’t trade my point guard for anybody.”
7. Nevada 105, UNM 104 OT (Jan. 7, 2017)
If you want to chalk this up to nothing more than the improbability of it all, feel free. But don’t tell me this wasn’t an all-timer.
In as brutal, painful, frustrating, even humiliating a loss as you can imagine for the Lobos — partially because it lived in infamy for years on the introduction video for ESPN host Scott Van Pelt’s weekly “Bad Beats” segment on SportsCenter highlighting the most painful ways sports bets are lost — Nevada erased a 25-point second-half deficit thanks in large part to hitting seven 3-pointers in the final 1:49 of regulation, including Marcus Marshall hitting four himself in the final 50 seconds, including two he banked in, the last with seven seconds left to force overtime.
Forward Jordan Caroline scored a Pit opponent record 45 points in what is the largest comeback ever against the Lobos.
“The tough thing about basketball is I thought New Mexico played absolutely phenomenal. Through 38 minutes, they played as good as anybody we’ve played all year,” Nevada coach Eric Musselman told the Journal. “... You can watch the rest of the college basketball season and you’re not going to see a comeback like that.”
8. UNM 88, San Diego State 86 OT (Feb. 6, 2010)
Mountain West Player of the Year Darington Hobson, who had hit a 55-foot buzzer beater at halftime, fouled San Diego State’s D.J. Gay on a 3-pointer with one second left in regulation, leading the visiting Aztec guard to hit two of three at the charity stripe to force overtime.
Hobson got his redemption in overtime, hitting two free throws with 3 seconds left, giving him 29 points in the game and the Lobos a 2-point victory.
"We talked about how special his talent is and what a big-time player he is. Sometimes, those big-time players have big-time days, and this was one of them," UNM coach Steve Alford said of Hobson.
9. UNM 59, UTEP 58 (March 6, 1976)
Five black players, including four starters, quit the team on a Monday demanding Norm Ellenberger not be allowed to return as UNM’s coach the following season due, in part, to how they felt he treated them compared to white teammates. Come Saturday night, with a makeshift Lobo starting lineup with a combined scoring average of 13.8 points per game on the season and Ellenberger having hired someone to dress up in a bear costume to shadow UTEP coach Don “The Bear” Haskins during warmups, the Lobos did the unthinkable.
Steve Davis, who scored 22 points, hit the deciding free throw with four seconds left.
“Our fans haven’t always agreed with me this year, and I don’t expect them to,” Ellenberger said. “But what a tribute to our program the way they helped us win tonight.”
Note: 10a. and 10b. are a package deal for being two Lobo games in a 24-hour period of Pit greatness including a tight win against a historic rival and against one of college basketball’s great teams that season.
10a. New Mexico 59, Arizona 58 (Dec. 21, 1984)
With UNM down by one in the final seconds in the Pit and Lobo stars Johnny Brown and George Scott getting all the defensive attention of Arizona coach Lute Olson for the final play, Niles Dockery knocked down a 15-foot jumper with 3 seconds remaining for the one-point win.
“We couldn’t have drawn it any more perfect,” UNM coach Gary Colson said. “We take the ball to one side, reverse it, Brown got a good pick, gave it to Dock in the corner and it was string music.
10b. No. 1 Georgetown 69, New Mexico 61 (Dec. 22, 1984)
Less than 24 hours after the last-second win over Arizona, the Lobos rallied from a big halftime deficit to make it a one-possession game with 3:47 to go against defending national champion Georgetown and star center Patrick Ewing. But, eventually, the Hoyas frontcourt did the Lobos in, with Ewing scoring 14 points. UNM’s Johnny Brown had a game-high 18.
Before the game, Georgetown had to hold a secret workout at Sandia High School to try to avoid fans.
Hoyas coach John Thompson left with plenty of respect for the Lobos, but not the Pit ramp.
“I went down to check the out the floor (in the pregame) and I told my assistants I’m not walking that ramp any more than I have to,” Thompson said. “The altitude didn’t affect the players, but it sure affected the coach.”
Honorable mention: A list of honorable mentions could go 20-games deep. I’m keeping it to one, knowing full well readers will gladly let me know about all the great games I left off the list.
No. 6 Oklahoma 100, UNM 96 (Dec. 8, 1988)
A Rob Robbins corner 3-pointer with 1:57 left put the Lobos up a point over the Sooners and their two All-Americans who were both top 12 NBA Draft picks after the season, Stacey King and Mookie Blaylock. A pair of Darrell McGee free throws had UNM up 94-91. Over the last 1:40 of the game, Oklahoma outscored UNM 9-3 for the 100-96 win.
“I’m proud of everybody in this locker room,” said Robbins while chomping down on a slice of pizza after scoring a game-high 25 in the loss. “I’m holding my head up. I think we proved tonight we can play with the best. From now on, we’ll be tough to beat.”
