UNM men's basketball: Chol, defense lead Lobos charge in exhibition win in the Pit

Defense? Plenty of it. Shooting? Well, that’s still a work in progress.

Antonio Chol scored a game-high 20 points to go along with four rebounds, two blocks and a steal to lead the UNM Lobos to a 64-54 win over an out-matched Northern Arizona team Thursday night in the Pit in the exhibition finale for both teams.

The Lobos roster has 14 new players learning a new offense and new defense from an entirely new coaching staff, and it certainly looked like it most of Thursday’s game. At least on offense.

UNM hit 17-of-47 shots — 7-15 on 2s (46.7%) and 10-32 from 3-point range (31.3%) — in the game, far too many of them being shots early in the shot clock, something first-year head coach Eric Olen said earlier in the week he was hoping his team would improve on after an ice-cold shooting night in an exhibition loss at Washington State last Saturday in Pullman, Washington.

“I thought we really struggled. I thought our shot selection, we regressed,” Olen said after the win. “I was hoping we’d take a step, but I thought we regressed in that area. We’ve got a new group. Everybody’s trying to play well and be aggressive. We just got to continue to work at understanding what shots we’re looking for, which ones we want from each person and and how to create them for ourselves.”

Aside from Chol (5-of-11 shooting) and freshman Jake Hall (4-of-7, 12 points), the rest of the Lobos shot just 27.6% in the game.

Luckily, the defense was on point throughout the night.

UNM scored 12 points off 16 NAU turnovers and held the Lumberjacks to 32.8% shooting (19-of-58). Eleven of those turnovers were in the first half when UNM held the visitors to 20.7% shooting and just 19 points. In the second half, NAU shot 44.8% and committed just five more turnovers.

“I felt like we had a couple opportunities and maybe we lost guys on the weak side or missed some rotations, but I have to look at the film to really see why we didn’t quite get the disruption we were looking for in the second half,” Olen said.

While Olen wasn’t overly thrilled with his team’s performance, they did show glimpses of why his scheme made him one of the off-season’s hottest coaching commodities.

The Lobos jumped out quickly, leading 9-0 in the first three and a half minutes and 16-2 on a Jake Hall 3-pointer with 13:30 still showing on the clock in the first half — knocking down open shot after open show with an offense that had NAU scrambling to try and close out on shooters.

But the one-sided nature of the game would take a turn at that point — coinciding primarily with the Lobos’ starting five heading to the bench and the early offensive flow for the Lobos coming to a screeching halt. Olen acknowledged part of that is still a coaching approach to trying to get a lot of game film on players now to know what rotations work best in the regular season.

“There’s a little bit of a choppiness to the game right now with the rotations that I don’t think is helping,” Olen said.

After hitting five of their first eight shots, they went 2-for-15 the rest of the half, relying on defense (UNM held the Lumberjacks to 6-of-29, 20.7% shooting in the half) and NAU’s fouling (UNM hit 11-of-17 first half free throws) to keep things in check as they took a 29-19 lead into the break.

NAU outrebounded UNM 41-34. Tomislav Buljan led the board work for the Lobos with a 5 point, 7 rebound effort.

Starting point guard Deyton Albury shot just 0-for-5, but finished with 6 points, four steals and drew six fouls in the game.

That’s foul!

Before the game, both coaches agreed to push the foul out limit to six instead of the usual foul — wanting more game film of players than worrying about fouling strategies.

During Saturday’s UNM/Washington State exhibition in Pullman, Washington, Olen and Cougars head coach agreed in the second half to let players just keep playing when they got to five fouls — something needed for a Lobos team that committed 31 fouls and had four players finish the game with five fouls, but not a foul out.

No Lobo reached even five fouls this game.

UNM men's basketball vs. Northern Arizona: Photos