Lobos don't doubt the Spartans ahead of quarterfinal showdown

LAS VEGAS, Nev. — The San Jose State Spartans walked onto the Thomas & Mack Center court Wednesday morning, opening the 2025 Mountain West Tournament with a simple message.

In fact, they wore it across their chests: “Doubt Us.”

After they beat Wyoming, 66-61, in a rather lightly attended midday game in Sin City, Las Vegas native Donovan Yap explained.

“Since the beginning of the season, we knew everyone counted us out,” Yap said. “... But as far as our circle goes, we believe we can win every single game and we put the work in for it.”

The problem for eighth-seeded Spartans, who happened to be accurately picked No. 8 in the preseason media poll, is that their chances at being overlooked, disrespected or doubted playing the top-seeded UNM Lobos in Thursday’s Mountain West Tournament quarterfinals is slim.

And they have nobody to blame but themselves.

In case the Spartans didn’t get the Lobos attention enough on Dec. 4 in the Pit when UNM needed a 22-8 run to close the game to win by six, they certainly did so on Jan. 14 when they beat the Lobos 71-70 in California.

It was UNM’s first loss in league play and also, at least based on seedings, the biggest upset in the league’s regular season (there were a couple league upsets with larger point spreads).

“I still argue with people that I don’t think we played that poor vs. San Jose,” Richard Pitino said in February presser, pushing back on the notion that the result was a huge shocker.

“I think if we just could have gotten two rebounds at the end and we’d be sitting undefeated (at the time). But who knows, if we win that game, maybe we lose something else. You just never know, but we were ready to go. San Jose is a scary matchup.”

Further, if any team understands it’s unwise to overlook a lower-seeded team that didn’t get the opening-round bye, it’s these Lobos, who last year became the only team ever to win four games in four days to win the Mountain West Tournament, doing so as a No. 6 seed.

This year, despite being the No 1 seed, which is supposed to earn a team the easiest path to the championship game, the Lobos are 5-3 against their half of the bracket (they are 12-0 against the teams on the bottom half of the bracket) with their three losses coming to No. 8 San Jose State, No. 4 San Diego State and No. 5 Boise State, and the latter two play each other Thursday with the winner advancing to the semifinal against the UNM-SJSU winner on Friday night.

“It’s going to be a phenomenal tournament,” Pitino said. “I’ve said from day one, it’s an amazing basketball conference. I experienced Pit West (Lobo fans’ unofficial nickname for the Thomas & Mack Center) last year. That was about as good as it gets. So hopefully our fans will get out there and yeah, it’s going to be anybody’s tournament. It’s going to be phenomenal.”

Several hundred Lobo fans gathered Wednesday afternoon at the New York, New York casino for a pep rally, warming up for what should be an enormously New Mexico-heavy advantage in the stands for Thursday’s game.

A hostile crowd won’t be the only thing the Spartans are getting ready for.

“I think it starts with, one, their physicality,” San Jose State coach Tim Miles said Wednesday afternoon. “They’re super physical. They’re physical defensively. And you’ve gotta match that. And then once you get by that, you’ve got Donovan (Dent), the player of the year, who — talk about electric, right? He is just an extraordinary guard, one of the best in the country. And then you got a lot of guys around him that know how to win.”

WAKE UP CALL: The Lobos have played in the “bottom” of the bracket in six of the past seven years, meaning they always played late games in the quarterfinals and semifinals (Saturday’s championship game is always at 3 p.m. local).

Thursday’s game is at noon local time in Las Vegas (1 p.m. Mountain). While the Lobos aren’t accustomed to the afternoon setting in the postseason, they have played eight such games this regular season and are 7-1 in those games. The lone loss was a noon Eastern (10 a.m. MT) start in New York’s Madison Square Garden when they lost to St. John’s on Nov. 17.

PLANTING A SEED: The Lobos as the No. 1 seed in the MW Tournament are 4-1 (lone loss coming in the 2010 semifinals vs. No. 5 San Diego State).

Overall, the No. 1 seed in the MW Tournament is 23-1 in the quarterfinals (lone loss being No. 1 Air Force to No. 8 Colorado State in 2004).

And in the tournament as a whole, the No. 1 seed is 45-18 (.714). The No. 2 seed has fared better at 46-14 (.767).

LOVO OMEN: Fernando Lovo’s first public introduction to Lobo fans after being named UNM Athletic Director was in the Pit on Dec. 4 — an 83-77 Lobos win over the Spartans.

Lovo is in Las Vegas and Thursday will be his first men’s Mountain West Tournament game.

700 CLUB: Former UNM coach Steve Alford’s No. 6 Nevada Wolf Pack beat No. 10 Fresno State, 86-71, in Wednesday’s first round.

It was career coaching win No. 700 for Alford, who got more wins while coaching the Lobos (155) than at any of his other five stops (Division III Manchester, Southwest Missouri State, Iowa, UCLA and now Nevada).