Nelly Junior Joseph has strong showing in Reese's College All-Star Game

Nelly Junior Joseph kept doing Nelly Junior Joseph things on Friday in San Antonio.

Inside the Alamodome, home of this weekend’s Final Four, the 6-foot-10 UNM Lobo center again proved to be fairly unstoppable when getting the ball in the low post in a 100-91 loss to the East All-Stars in the annual NABC-Reese’s College All-Star Game.

Junior Joseph’s 14 points came on an efficient 7-of-8 shooting to go along with a pair of rebounds and two steals in 19 minutes of play.

He was the only starter for the West all-stars to finish the game with positive plus/minus in the game (he was at plus-1).

Junior Joseph was a First Team All-Mountain West selection this past season and led the league in shooting (56.4%) and was the only player in the league to average a double-double (14.2 points per game, 11.0 rebounds).

While his game was strong, Junior Joseph did not win game MVP honors, ending a unique streak of back-to-back Reese’s College All-Star Game MVP honors for former UNM Lobos as Morris Udeze won that honor in his hometown of Houston at the 2023 Final Four and Jaelen House won it at last year’s Final Four in Glendale, near his hometown of Phoenix.

The game’s MVP went to East starting wing David Joplin of Marquette, who followed a March 21 loss to the UNM Lobos in the NCAA Tournament in which he scored 28 points and game-high six 3-pointers with a game-high 21 points on Friday with four made 3-pointers for the East All-Stars.

Junior Joseph’s teammate, Aniwaniwa Tait-Jones finished with six points, five rebounds, and a block in 15 minutes. Tait-Jones was the Big West Player of the Year this past season at UC San Diego under head coach Eric Olen, who was named head coach of the UNM Lobos this week.

There were several other Mountain West ties to this year’s All-Star game, including:

• Nevada’s Kobe Sanders had two points on 1-of-7 shooting with five assists and three steals for the West.
• Creighton’s Steven Ashworth, who played three seasons (2021-23) at Utah State, had nine points and two assists for the West.
• Missouri’s Caleb Grill, who in 2021 started all 27 games for UNLV, started for the East and had two steals, but was scoreless on 0-for-5 shooting.
• VCU’s Max Shulga, who was Ashworth’s teammate at Utah State from 2021 to 2023 and played with VCU in the Pit this past season, finished with nine points and four rebounds.