Lobos clamp down on defense, trounce Cowboys in second half 

The Wyoming Cowboys came to the Pit looking to pick a fight.

The UNM Lobos politely obliged their rough-and-rugged visitors for about 15 minutes.

Then, after taking the best shots the Cowboys had to offer, Tomislav Buljan and the Lobos had seen enough.

UNM scored 16 second-chance points off a season-high 17 offensive rebounds against the 13th best defensive rebounding team in the country, and Buljan's 25-point, 12-rebound double-double set the tone for a physical 78-58 win over Wyoming in front of an announced Pit crowd of 13,763.

"Tomislav was unbelievable," UNM coach Eric Olen said when asked about UNM's offensive rebounding prowess. "... A lot of it starts with him. When he plays like that, we're pretty good. We always want to try to win the possession battle. And they're a team who's been doing that pretty consistently on the glass and with the turnover margin (UNM had nine turnovers to Wyoming's 13). So to get the better into both of those, I thought was probably the difference."

With the win, the Lobos improve to 11-3 overall and 2-1 in Mountain West play while also improving their home win streak to 20 consecutive victories in the Pit, the fifth longest active home win streak in the country.

Due to the league's unbalanced schedule, this was the only meeting between the Lobos and Cowboys (10-4, 1-2 MW) this season.

The hot-shooting Cowboys led the Lobos 29-22 on a Gavin Gores 3-pointer with 6 minutes, 12 seconds left in the first half. To that point of the game, the visitors had hit 12-of-19 shots (63.2%) and buried four 3-pointers. 

UNM, and the Pit, responded by closing out the half on a 12-2 scoring run with defense leading the charge. Wyoming hit one of its final eight shots of the half and the Lobos took a 34-31 lead into the locker room. 

In the second half, UNM held Wyoming to 32.0% shooting (8-of-25 and 3-of-13 from 3-point range) and the Cowboys committed nine of their 13 turnovers after halftime. 

"I thought we were really good defensively tonight, and as the game wore down, I felt like you could see we were getting more and more comfortable with how they're playing, what they were doing, what our solutions were," Olen said. "I thought Luke (Haupt) was awesome on both sides of the ball, but defensively — (Wyoming's Nasir) Meyer kind of got off to a pretty good start, and he's a really talented player, but I thought Luke made it really difficult for him as the game went on." 

Leland Walker, Wyoming's leading scorer and senior leader, led the Cowboys with 14 points, but also had six turnovers.  No other Wyoming player scored in double figures, but Meyer was close with nine points.

Jake Hall, who had missed his first three 3-pointers in the game (and with his o-for-7 3-point shooting night Tuesday in the Boise State loss had missed 10 in a row), had a flurry of corner 3s to start the second half and put UNM on its way to the blowout. He hit 3s with 19:01 and 18:17 on the clock, leading to a Sundance Wicks timeout and a 40-31 Lobos lead. Hall hit another with 16:23 in the half as part of an 8-0 run that put UNM up 48-34 with 15:02 left. 

UNM outrebounded Wyoming 37-30 and shot 46.9% for the game. 

Uriah Tenette had 14 points and three assists off the bench, Deyton Albury had seven assists and Haupt added 10 points, five rebounds and three steals in 23 minutes for the Lobos before he fouled out with 6:47 left in the game.

For Buljan, it was his sixth double-double of the season, and he's just the third Lobo freshman ever to post a 25-point double-double (J.T. Toppin and Kenny Thomas both did it twice).

"I knew that I need to do my job, like usual, crashing the boards and being aggressive," Buljan said. "Coaches were telling me that I need to be physical against their bigs. And I think we executed pretty well, not only me, but also the others. ...

"We knew that it's something different when you play at home with these fans. You need to put more effort, more energy, and that pushes you to become better and also win the game at the end."

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