Lobo men's basketball: UNM falls to Washington State in exhibition

PULLMAN, Washington — The UNM Lobos remain undefeated in the Eric Olen era.

But after committing 31 fouls and shooting just 26.7% from the floor in a 74-66 road loss to Washington State on Saturday, the unblemished record is only because it was an exhibition.

Scoreboard notwithstanding, the first-year Lobos coach, who has an entirely new roster of players — 11 Lobos saw the court, 10 of them between 13 and 23 minutes — was happy with what he got out his team in Beasley Coliseum.

“That’s part of what we’re trying to figure out, right?” Olen said, acknowledging maybe the biggest goal of the game was to get different combinations of players on the court against an opposing defense to start evaluating the parts of the game that can’t be seen without film.

“I think that’s where with so many new guys, and there’s only so much you can learn in practice, so we have to get different groups, we have to get a lot of guys reps, and we have to get different lineups and rotations reps together so that we can evaluate how to best use everybody.”

Three Lobos — Antonio Chol (11), Uriah Tenette (11) and Jake Hall (10) — scored in double figures.

UNM was 11-of-44 (25.0%) from 3-point range. Had Saturday’s game been in the regular season, it would have been a school record for 3-pointers attempted.

UNM had cold streaks of 0-7 shooting, 0-8, 1-10, 1-10 and 1-11.

And still had a chance to win down the stretch of what was overall a rather ugly game for both teams (WSU committed 19 turnovers and shot just 20.8% overall and 22.7 from 3-point range).

UNM’s starting backcourt of Deyton Albury, Chris Howell and Hall shot a combined 5-for-31 (16.1%) from the field, including each being ice cold to start the game. Albury started 0-for-6, Howell 0-for-5 and Hall was 0-for-4 before hitting two 3-pointers to finish the first half with UNM leading 38-37.

Hall finished 3-for-13, including 2-for-12 from 3-point range.

The Lobos didn’t make back-to-back shots without a miss once in the second half.

Olen isn’t bothered by the misses.

“I believe in the guys. I thought we had the right guys shooting them,” Olen said. “... I feel comfortable with the shots. I mean, we weren’t perfect. There’s certainly ones we want back, but generally ... those are shots I’m pretty confident in that we’re going to make.”

Tenette, listed at 5-foot-11, had a nice debut in the cherry and silver, clearly not letting being the smallest player on the court affect his confidence.

“I liked his aggression,” Olen said. “I thought he played with a lot of confidence. Didn’t turn the ball over. I thought he took the right shots for the most part. So yeah, encouraging from from him.”

FOR STARTERS: PG Deyton Albury, G Jake Hall, G Chris Howell, F Antonio Chol, F Tomislav Buljan were the first starting five in the Olen era.

TECHNICALLY SPEAKING: Milos Vicentic, playing with a face mask due to taking a hard shot to the face in practice earlier in the week, hit a corner 3 with 8:00 left in the first half to give UNM an 18-17 lead.

He was whistled for a technical foul for what official Tony Padilla explained to a reporter sitting courtside was taunting the Cougars’ bench.

In the second half, Padilla called a technical on the WSU bench after continued complaining about calls.

COURTSIDE: Tenette’s parents, Michael and Erica, sat courtside in Beasley Coliseum with family friend, Isaac Fontaine, the all-time leading scorer in WSU history (2003 points scored from 1994-97.)

UP NEXT: The Lobos host Northern Arizona on Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Pit for their second, and final, exhibition game.

The regular season starts Nov. 5 in the Pit vs. East Texas A&M at 7 p.m.