Croation domination: Lobo forward Tomislav Buljan dominating the boards

Through two weeks of the regular season, the UNM Lobos are dead last in the Mountain West conference in offensive rebound rate.

Remarkably, UNM freshman Tomislav Buljan also happens to be the league leader in offensive rebound rate — a somewhat hard statistic to wrap you mind around.

Well, maybe only if you overthink it.

On Monday morning, after a reporter stumbled through a long, overly-complicated question concerning potential strategic decisions — decisions that might lead to only Buljan being sent to the offensive glass, while all other Lobos were instructed to get back on defense — first-year UNM coach Eric Olen calmly offered another, far more obvious answer.

“A lot of it is he’s just a really good rebounder,” Olen said. Indeed, he is.

Buljan, the 23-year-old, 6-foot-9 forward from Croatia who is four games into his college career, entered the week leading the Mountain West in offensive rebound rate (23.2%) while also ranking fifth in defensive rebound rate (25.4%).

Nationally, Buljan is one of only five players with plus-20% rebound rates on offense and defense (meaning he grabs at least one out of every five missed shots while he’s on the court) while also averaging at least 24 minutes per game.

The rest of the list: Villanova senior Duke Brennan, Notre Dame senior Carson Towt, Purdue senior Trey Kaufman-Renn and Saint Mary’s junior Andrew McKeever.

Buljan led his Croatian pro league last year in rebounding, so maybe this shouldn’t be much of a surprise, even as a “freshman.”

“Last year where I was playing, I was the one who brought up energy and guy who crashes the rebounds,” Buljan said on Monday. “It’s just the effort that I put in, I would say. ... I do it because the team needs me to do that to be successful. That’s why I do that job, because I’m good at it.”

His season average through four games is 11.8 points and 10.8 rebounds — one of only four Mountain West players entering the week averaging a double-double.

Who you calling old?

Asked how different the United State college game compares in terms of pace of play and physicality to the Croatian pro league, Buljan smiled.

“It’s a lot different. There you play against guys who sometimes also, some of them also work,” Buljan said. “And they’re old, like 30 years old, so they cannot keep up with the pace.

“Here, everybody plays physical, everybody plays hard, especially on defense. It’s way different. Nobody’s gonna let you just drive or be open all the time.”

Broadcast info

Monday, NBC Sports Network relaunched, and is available in the Albuquerque area on both YouTube TV and Comcast.

The interest to Lobo fans might be that Thursday and Friday’s Hall of Fame Classic games, originally set to only stream on Peacock, will now also be broadcast on NBCSN, where available.

Both basketball games can also be heard over New Mexico radio waves on the usual flagship station KKOB (770 AM/96.3 FM), but for the first regular season games this season, fans will actually hear the usual guy, Robert Portnoy.

Due to UNM partnering with the Altitude Sports network to broadcast several home games this season, Portnoy and Lobo legend and game analyst Hunter Greene each slid over to the TV broadcasts of UNM’s first three regular season games. And due to the Colorado State/UNM football game in Albuquerque on Saturday taking Portnoy and leading to Jeff Siembieda doing the radio call in Las Cruces, Thursday and Friday’s games in Kansas City, Missouri, will be Portnoy’s first men’s hoops regular season games, though as always, he remains a regular at Lobo press conferences and practices are open to the school radio crew.