Hot-shooting Rams spoil Lobos' Senior Night

Tuesday night, everything fell into place for the UNM Lobos.

Wednesday night, it fell apart.

The Colorado State Rams hit 11 3-pointers, shot 58.5% from the field and extended their win streak to eight in a row, beating the Lobos 82-74 in the regular season finale in the Pit.

UNM (22-8 overall) falls to 13-6 in Mountain West play, tied with San Diego State for second and still with a chance for at least a share of the Mountain West title with a win Saturday at first-place Utah State. UNLV walloped Utah State 92-65 on Tuesday, meaning that had the Lobos won on Wednesday, Saturday's game would have been a winner-take-all championship showdown.

“I did not put our guys in position to be successful early in the game,” a clearly, and understandably, frustrated UNM coach Eric Olen said. “Gave them a plan that was — just didn't set them up for success. This, this is on me for sure.

“Thought our guys really competed and fought to try to get back in it and give themselves a chance. But once I put them in that hole, the room for error is pretty minimal and you kind of have to play almost perfectly from there. So, yeah, really disappointing night.”

The Rams (20-10, 11-8 MW), again showed why they are among the nation's top 20 teams in just about every shooting category, getting 19 points on 5-of-8 3-point shooting from forward Kyle Jorgensen, who was injured when the Lobos beat CSU 80-70 on Jan. 6 in Fort Collins. Fellow Rams big man Rashaan Memba, who also missed that January game injured and had hit just 2-of-5 3-pointers all season, was 3-of-4 from beyond the arc on Wednesday. 

CSU, now in a four-way tie for fifth place in the conference, finished the game with 19 assists on 24 made baskets — 13-of-16 (81.3%) on 2s and 11-of-25 (44.0%) on 3s. They added a more-than-effective 23-of-31 (74.2%) at the free throw line.

Colorado State, which took a 40-25 lead into halftime, never trailed. The game wasn't without a Lobo rally, however.

An Augustinas Kiudulas layup with 13:58 remaining in the game gave CSU its largest lead of the game — 58-39.

That was answered by the longest stretch of solid defense from the Lobos, who held the Rams without a field goal over the next 6 minutes, 53 seconds. UNM had six steals in that span, but managed to shave just 10 points off that lead — 62-53 — before a Kiudulas 3-pointer with 7:05 left made it 65-53.

The Rams hit 13-of-18 free throws in the final 3:31 of the game to ice the upset as 8.5-point underdogs, thwarting every attempt from the announced Pit crowd of 14,051 to will the Lobos to a come back.

UNM was led by 22 points by senior Deyton Albury (8-9 FGs, 5-5 FTs). Tomislav Buljan (14), Luke Haupt (13) and Jake Hall (13) joined him as double-digit scorers.

The Lobos scored 26 points off 20 CSU turnovers, but the Rams efficiency on offense was far too much for that to make much of a difference.

Senior Night

Six Lobos — Deyton Albury, Luke Haupt, Chris Howell, Tajavis Miller, Milos Vicentic and first-year player Tomislav Buljan — and one team manager, Lucas Kedge, were honored in pregame Senior Night ceremonies.

The program hopes two players — Howell, who missed much of the season with an injury, and Buljan, who was granted only one year of playing eligibility by the NCAA when he came to the United States after playing professionally in his home country of Croatia — can mount successful appeals for an extra season of playing eligibility. For now, however, Wednesday was their final games scheduled in the Pit.

The new boss

New UNM Athletic Director Ryan Berryman was honored on the court at the under-12 media timeout in the first half, presented by UNM President Garnett S. Stokes with a turquoise jersey with his name on the back.

Berryman addressed the crowd, saying he grew up dreaming of the job.

No television Saturday

None of Saturday's Mountain West games will be televised, including UNM at Utah State in Logan, Utah.

The league's media partners — CBS Sports and Fox Sports — each have other obligations. CBS Sports Network has conference tournament games scheduled all day and FS1 has the World Baseball Classic and Big Ten games all day.

All five MW games on Saturday will be streamed online at TheMW.com.

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