Looking up: Lobos' best defense has come with two shortest players on court together

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — The two shortest men on the UNM Lobo roster are Deyton Albury (6-foot-3) and Uriah Tenette (5-11).

Otherwise, the first-year roster assembled by Eric Olen is certainly among one of the taller teams UNM has had position-by-position.

And while both have been offensively dynamic at times this season — they were the Lobos’ top two scorers in Saturday’s rivalry road loss at NM State with Albury scoring 18 points and Tenette 13 — and arguably two of the three most athletic players on the team, it might still be safe to assume that maintaining the team’s high defensive standards could be difficult if both of the shortest players are on the court at the same time.

Not so fast.

Despite their size, the combination of the two point guards playing on the court together is not only something Olen has been boldly exploring more and more often (for benefits mostly related to their ability to penetrate on offense), but it’s actually been particularly paying off for the Lobos defense.

“We definitely think those guys can play together, specifically against aggressive defenses,” Olen said. “They give us a little more juice off the bounce. We’ve had those guys play together some in the early stages, and then both kind of had injuries and missed the (Nov. 11 UC Riverside) game, missed a lot of practice time, so they didn’t play as much together in the last game until late when we kind of went to that.

“But, yeah, we definitely think those are two guys that can play together.”

While it’s only been for 25 minutes in the three games they’ve played (each missed the UCR game when Highlanders’ athletic guard Andrew Henderson went off for 27 points and UCR hit 14 combined 3-pointers), the Albury and Tenette combination on the court has statistically been the best two-man combination on the team for defensive efficiency this season, per data tracked by CBBAnalytics.com, at 69.3 (roughly speaking, that translates to holding teams under 0.7 points per possession).

Lobos defensive efficiency

• 92.2 — Overall defensive rating

• 69.3 — Defensive rating with Albury and Tenette on floor

• 100.7 — Defensive rating with neither Albury or Tenette on floor

UNM’s steal rate this season of 13.5% increases, maybe unsurprisingly, to 17.9% with the two speedsters on the court.

But so do other defensive statistics like opponent shooting percentage (opponent effective FG percent of 45.0% overall on the season vs. 37.1% with them both on the court). Even rebounding, where size clearly matters, doesn’t drop much (71.4% DRB rate overall, 70.8% with those two on the court).

“Deyton does a good job of kind of playing a little bigger than he is with the way he rebounds the ball, so we feel like that allows us to play them together a little bit,” Olen said.

Last time here

This isn’t the first time the Lobos have played in T-Mobile Arena in Kansas City, nor the first time they did so with a first-year coach.

Of course the last time — Dec. 14, 2013 — the arena was called the Sprint Center, the one-game event was called the Kansas City Shootout, and the first-year Lobos coach was Craig Neal.

A Kansas Jayhawks team loaded with five future NBA players, including freshmen sensations Andrew Wiggins and Joel Embiid, outscored the Lobos (hey, they had two future NBA players of their own in Alex Kirk and Cameron Bairstow) 41-25 in the second half to pull away for an 80-63 win.

Bairstow and Kendall Williams each scored 24 for the Lobos, accounting for a little more than 76% of the team’s points in the loss.

Those two teams would meet up again later that season, just not to play. They were both in the same pod of games in the NCAA Tournament in St. Louis and both lost to No. 10 seed Stanford — No. 7 UNM lost 58-53 in the first round and the No. 2 seed Jayhawks lost to the Sweet 16 bound Cardinal two days later, 60-57.

The series

This is just the second meeting between the Lobos and Nebraska. The first was an 83-71 Lobos win in the Pit on March 17, 2009, in the opening round of the NIT.

Albuquerque’s own Daniel Faris went off for a 28 point, 13 rebound double-double and Tony Danridge chipped in 18 points and five assists in the UNM victory.

Familiar faces

All we need is a fur coat and this would have Josiah Allick written all over it.

Allick, who is currently playing for the Greensboro (North Carolina) Swarm in the NBA G-League, started his college basketball career playing for the University of Missouri Kansas City (they prefer to go by just Kansas City now), transferred to UNM then finished his college career at Nebraska.

No, Allick is not expected to be at Thursday’s game.

Nebraska’s 6-6 forward Will Cooper should be, though. The sophomore transfer from Air Force hasn’t played in a game yet this season, but had one of his best games as a freshman in the Pit on March 1 for the Falcons. Cooper was 3-for-3 from 3-point range and scored 14 points in a 21-point loss to the Lobos.

Friday could bring some more familiar faces to the Lobos game if they match up with Mississippi State, who plays Kansas State on Thursday night.

Aside from the Bulldogs being coached by former New Mexico State head coach Chris Jans and former Aggies assistant David Anwar being on staff, there are two former Lobos on the bench, as well.

Former UNM Lobo assistant coach Scott Padgett is a Mississippi State assistant coach and former Lobo player Logan Padgett, Scott’s son, is listed as one of four “men’s basketball fellows” on the staff, essentially a graduate assistant type position with the team as Logan is pursuing a master’s degree in workforce education.

Both Padgetts were on the lost COVID season of 2020-21 when the team played the entirety of the season outside the state of New Mexico and the season ended in the firing of Paul Weir.