The run is done: Enchantment stifled by elite defense in TBT loss

The run is done.

A superb defensive effort on the perimeter Sunday by Bleed Green, a North Texas alumni team, shut down The Enchantment’s high-powered guards and led to a 70-57 win in the third round of the $1 million, winner-take-all TBT (The Basketball Tournament) regional inside Texas Tech’s United Supermarkets Arena in Lubbock, Texas.

After Enchantment hit 16 3-pointers in a second-round blowout victory over regional host Air Raiders, a Texas Tech alumni team, the team of former Lobos, Aggies and New Mexico-bred players managed to shoot just 2-of-14 (14.3%) from 3-point range on Sunday.

And while former NMSU Aggie big men Johnny McCants (14 points, 7 rebounds) and Brandon West (10 points, 5 rebounds) had success inside, it was hardly enough to keep Bleed Green from a rather convincing, nearly wire-to-wire victory (Enchantment scored the first basket of the game and led 2-0, but never led again).

Still, for Enchantment this year’s TBT showing was a step forward — both for a team making its third appearance in the event and advancing farther than any previous year, but also for college hoops in New Mexico.

The cohesiveness of former Lobos and former Aggies playing together as one after the rivalry tensions between the two programs boiled over in the past year was notable and regularly commented on by fans of both programs on social media.

Over the past two weeks, players from both programs came together with the common goal of not only winning the TBT but also to bring awareness to gun violence and to the JB White Foundation, formed in 2020 after Santa Fe High graduate J.B. White was shot and killed at a party outside Santa Fe only days before he was supposed to move to Albuquerque to join the Lobos as one of the highest ranked high school recruits out of the state in recent history.

As for Sunday, Bleed Green, who won all three of its Lubbock Regional games by double figures, scored 19 points off 18 Enchantment turnovers and kept in check the Enchantment guards who had controlled the opening two wins of the tournament for the team.

Newly-hired North Texas head coach Ross Hodge, who was a longtime assistant with the team that recruited and mentored many of the Bleed Green players, was interviewed during Sunday’s ESPN+ broadcast and summed up the defensive philosophy of the team succinctly. He said with a player as good as Scott Bamforth, the Del Norte High School graduate who plays professionally in Spain and scored a game-high 24 points in Friday’s Enchantment win, it’s not enough just to defend him well and contest his shots when he has the ball. The key to defend an elite talent like Bamforth is to make a concerted, team-effort to prevent him from even being able to get the ball to take contested shots in the first place.

Bamforth ended the game with 7 points on 3-of-7 shooting (1-4 from 3-point range) but showed patience and his basketball IQ by consistently finding open teammates when the double team came, dishing out a game-high six assists (the rest of Enchantment had just four).

The other two guards who were so integral in Enchantment’s first two wins — former UNM Lobo Troy Simons and former NMSU Aggie Evan Gilyard — struggled to find the same success as earlier in the tournament.

Simons finished with 6 points and four turnovers in 33 minutes and Gilyard had 2 points on 1-of-8 shooting with 5 turnovers and two assists in 29 minutes.

The only 3-pointer made by the three guards came at the 8:50 mark of the 4th quarter by Bamforth.

Enchantment’s only other 3-pointer came from 35-year-old former Lobo Roman Martinez, who had 7 points and three rebounds in 14 minutes.

RUN IT BACK? TBT co-General Manager Brandon Mason, who shares that title with Ryan Berryman, told the Journal on Sunday there is hope The Pit can host a TBT Regional again next summer like it did in 2022.

He also said a decision hasn’t been made yet about whether The Enchantment will remain an all-inclusive New Mexico team as it was this summer or return to a primarily UNM Lobo alumni team with the return of The Panamaniacs, the NMSU-based alumni team that competed in TBT last year.

What is clear, he said, was that based on the number of phone calls and text messages from former Lobos and Aggies he received last week during the TBT who are asking to play in the event next year, there is plenty of interest to field teams for both schools.

BIG HELP: West was strong for Enchantment on Sunday, but the additions of athletic forwards McCants and Cunningham — each standing 6-foot-7 and able to handle pick and roll coverage well in the often guard-dominated tournament — were clearly huge factors in this year’s Enchantment improvement.

BETTER THAN BEFORE: Enchantment now has a 3-3 record in TBT — losing in its first game in 2021, going 1-1 and losing in the Round 2 last year in the Pit and going 2-1 and losing in Round 3 this year in Lubbock.