Do Lobos have the fire to avoid three-game skid against Lopes, hostile Havocs on road?

It seems as though the UNM Lobos have taken on the personality of their head coach.

Eric Olen certainly has a laid back "California chill", as CBS Sports Network analyst Pete Gillen described him during one game, sort of vibe to him most of the time: never too high, never too low. But make no mistake, Olen knows when it's time to get fiery, as he's shown plenty of times on the court this season.

Now, it's time to see if his Lobos (18-6, 9-4 Mountain West) — losers of back-to-back home games in the Pit — can continue to follow their head coach's lead and learn to ditch the mellow when it's needed most.

Wednesday night in Phoenix — playing a Grand Canyon team looking for revenge after a 23-point loss in the Pit last month, in an arena where San Diego State, Utah State and Boise State have all been overwhelmed by the Lopes and the boisterous Havocs student section — is that time for the Lobos.

For GCU (15-8, 8-4 MW), a win leapfrogs them in the MW standings into third place. 

"We have to have some urgency to get some things corrected," Olen said earlier this week. "We're in a difficult stretch of the schedule, and just got to work through it, stick to our process, try to play a little better. We have competitive guys. They have a lot of pride in what they're doing."

Senior guard Luke Haupt, coming off a career-high 30 points (his previous best this season was 11 points, and previous best when he was a Division II player was 27), was protective of his teammates when asked a question with the word "urgency" in it on Monday morning.

"I don't think there's a lack of any of those things within our team," Haupt said, referring to urgency and energy. "... I think that's always the goal, is to have a high level of basketball and not have the peaks and valleys within a team. But I think everybody's working hard trying to be as consistent as they can, and it doesn't always happen."

Haupt, who fouled out of Saturday's one-point loss to Boise State with 1:03 left in the game, has been praised by Olen all season for leadership that goes far beyond the stat sheet born of his desire to do whatever he can do to win games. The best thing for the Lobos in the Boise State matchup was Haupt taking over offensively unlike anything fans, or his teammates, have seen from him this year.

"I have a ton of respect for the way he competes," Olen said on Saturday night. "I think everybody kind of sees it. I hope that our young guys are paying attention, because that's what college basketball looks like to compete at a high level like. That's what we wanted him to bring here, and he's delivered on that all season long. We're talking about it because he scored 30 points, but sometimes he scores three, and he's doing a lot of the same stuff."

To overcome the same fate at GCU that league leaders SDSU and Utah State faced, the Lobos will likely need more than just Haupt playing with that fire, emotion and, yes, urgency that Olen and Haupt both have shown a keen ability to turn on at the right time. Now, they just need the rest of the Lobos to follow suit.

Jake 'n bake

Lobo freshman Jake Hall has made 74 3-pointers this season (of 172, 43.0%). That's one off the record for a Mountain West freshman in a season — 75 by Rashad Muhammad at San Jose State in the 2013-14 season.

Hall's 41-of-91 (45.1%) 3-point clip in Mountain West games (13 of them so far) gave him the freshman record on Saturday for 3-pointers made in league play (previous record of 40 was set by UNLV's Patrick McCaw over 17 league games played.

Consecutive losses

Only one Mountain West team has managed to avoid losing two games in a row this season: Grand Canyon.

The Lopes are looking to continue that trend Wednesday night with a win while the Lobos are coming off their first two-game losing streak of the season.

Avoiding 3

UNM looks to avoid a three-game losing streak for the first time since the program dropped four-consecutive games since dropping four in a row from Feb. 1, 2023, through Feb. 14, 2023, — a stretch that including road losses at Utah State and Air Force and home losses in the Pit to Nevada and Wyoming.

The last time an Olen-coached team dropped three in a row was a four-game skid at UC San Diego from Nov. 24, 2023, though Dec. 1, 2023, — a stretch that included a one-point loss in the closing seconds to a San Diego State team that ended up as a No. 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Avoiding 300

A Lopes win gives Grand Canyon coach Bryce Drew his 300th career coaching victory.

Series notes

The Lobos lead the all-time series 5-1 with all five wins coming in the Pit. The lost the only previous time they played in Global Credit Union Arena (the GCU at GCU), 68-65, on Dec. 23, 2014.

In the first game played this season, a close game early in the second half snowballed late into a 23-point Lobos blowout, 87-64.

This is UNM's third rematch game of the season. The Lobos are 1-1 in the first two — a win at San Jose State and Saturday's loss to Boise State.

Reach Geoff Grammer at ggrammer@abqjournal.com or follow him on Twitter (X) @GeoffGrammer.