Lobos hoping for raucous Pit crowd vs. Nevada

Eric Olen has looked right at home in the Pit this season.

The first-year coach has his Lobos at 11-0 in the building this season — a home win streak that is up to 22 in a row overall for UNM, the fifth longest in the country.

But Saturday night, he'll be facing not one, but two coaches who have far more experience inside University Arena than he does when the Nevada Wolf Pack pay their annual visit with head coach Steve Alford and Associate Head Coach Craig Neal — both former UNM Lobo head coaches.

"That's a tough place to get wins," Alford said earlier this week of the Pit. "Coached there, and I've coached against them in there. That is one of the top five home courts in all the country, so we know we've got to go in there, and for 40 minutes we got to be really tough minded."

As the midway point of Mountain West play approaches, both teams — along with three or four others — are still very much in the hunt for a conference championship this season.

UNM (15-4, 6-2 Mountain West) leads the conference in defensive efficiency in league play and Nevada (14-5, 6-2 MW) has ranked No. 2 in offensive efficiency in league play.

The intrigue of the former Lobo coaches coming to town, in addition to a popular retro night promotion on tap, has created some buzz for the game — buzz UNM hopes overrides a weather forecast that could make it difficult for fans in the East Mountains or outside of the Metro area to get to the game.

"Fired up that the fans are going to be engaged," Olen said. "We're excited to play in here, in that type of environment. ... I think our guys understand it's a big game, maybe for different reasons than the fans view it that way. It's a really good team, even with us in the standings, it's at home — it's great opportunity for us, and I think our guys understand."

That's so mid

While Nevada leads the MW in 3-point shooting percentage in league games (42.6%) and rank 10th in the country overall this season (39.4%), they don't actually shoot many of them. They've reached double digit made 3s just three times this season.

UNM, meanwhile, lures opponents into shooting among the largest volume of 3-pointers per game this season (49.7% of opponent shot attempts are from beyond the arc, sixth highest out of 365 Division I teams).

While that could be a big factor, the shot profile for Nevada shows they far prefer their shots in the midrange. The Wolf Pack is in the 95th percentile in non-paint 23-point attempts this season (they've tried a Mountain West high 195 of them). That's 18.0% of their shot attempts coming from the space on the floor modern analytics-driven basketball junkies would tell you is the most inefficient place on the floor to shoot from.

The national average for non-paint 2s, or midrange 2s, is 10.5%.

Four MW teams shoot above the national average (Nevada, San Diego State, San Jose State and Grand Canyon). The other eight are well below it, all below 8.0%, in fact (the Lobos have attempted just 62 midrange 2s this season, or 5.7% of their attempts).

Olen said SDSU and Grand Canyon are both good comparisons in terms of shot profile for where Nevada's offense comes from. Olen felt that, in both of those games, his defense handled that shot profile well for a half.

He told the Journal he felt they let both SDSU and GCU get too "comfortable" in the midrange in the first half of both games and improved in that as the game went along. With those games under their belt, he hopes the defense is ready to go from the jump rather than needing a half to get adjusted.

Retro night

Somehow, the 90's are now a "Retro Night" decade and the Lobos are wearing throwback jerseys honoring the familiar logo and on-court lettering from the 1990s (the jerseys were never actually team jerseys in the past, though).

There is retro gear (a variety of throwback t-shirts) available for fans in the Lobo Den store and there is a specially-created "90s" living room in the arena near the north east concourse that includes several dozen items from the 90s, including plenty of Lobo memorabilia that fans can go take photos with.

Asked Friday if the 1990s really already qualified as a throwback decade, the 45-year-old Olen admitted he was skeptical at first until he saw some of his players trying to guess what some of the 1990s items on display were.

The floppy disc was apparently a real stumper for them.

The streak

That 22-game home win streak — 11-0 in the Pit this season plus the final 11 games in the arena last season — is tied for the fifth longest in the country at the Division I level.

There are seven DI teams at 21 home wins in a row or better. Only UNM (22) and No. 5 Duke (25) have their streaks on the line Saturday with home games (Duke hosts Wake Forest).

Closing in

Jake Hall enters Saturday's game with 54 3-pointers made this season, one shy of tying one of Alford and Neal's stars, and one of UNM's all-time greats, Kendall Williams for most 3-pointers made in a season by a freshman.

Hall's 54 made 3s has come in 19 games played. Williams' freshman record of 55 made 3s came in 35 games.

Most 3s by UNM freshman

• 55 — Kendall Williams, 2011 (35 games)
• 54 — Jake Hall, 2026 (19 games)
• 54 — John Robinson II, 1999 (34 games)
• 44 — Kevin Henry, 1998 (32 games)
• 42 — Cullen Neal, 2014 (34 games)
• 40 — Charles Smith, 1994 (31 games)
• 40 — Rob Robbins, 1988 (36 games)

Series notes

Nevada leads the all-time series against UNM 14-11. UNM has a 6-3 edge in the Pit.

UNM's current four-game win streak against the Wolf Pack represents the longest active losing streak Steve Alford has against Mountain West teams.

Last year's Nevada game in the Pit was an all-timer. In the 1,000th men's basketball game played in the six-decade old iconic arena, Nelly Junior Joseph gathered a loose ball pushed to him by Donovan Dent, who was on the floor in a scramble for the ball, then hit a 15-foot jumper at the buzzer in overtime for an 82-81 win. 

The Lobos later beat Nevada 71-67 in Reno in another down-to-the-wire game.

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