Lobos Protect Home Court One Last Time, Beat St. Joseph’s 84–69 to Advance to NIT Final Four
UNM senior guard Deyton Albury attacks the basket against St. Joseph’s in UNM’s 84-69 win in the NIT Quarterfinal. Photo: UNM Athletics.
In their true final game at the Pit this season, UNM men’s basketball closed strong, turning a 2-point halftime deficit into an 84–69 win over St. Joseph’s (24-11) in the NIT quarterfinal.
The Lobos trailed 39-37 at halftime and outside of Tomislav Buljan’s 16 first half points, the Lobos struggled to get loose and find consistent offense.
“In the first half, the first couple minutes we were getting to the basket at ease and then they made an adjustment and kind of started denying and we got out of our rhythm a little bit,” said UNM senior guard Luke Haupt who finished with 10 points, five rebounds and five assists.
St. Joe’s was able to ride the hot hand of senior guard Derek Simpson (6-foot-3) who went 4-of-5 from deep and scored 16 points in the first half.
But the Hawks’ shooting would level off as, as they would go only 3-of-14 as a team and hold Simpson to just 2-of-7 shooting in the second half.
“I thought the biggest difference was their shot making fell off,” UNM head coach Eric Olen said after the game. “That allowed us to run a little bit. If you don’t score, then it’s harder to get stops so I thought it was all connected in that.
We had talked about that at half time, you know if we can just keep playing really hard, they’ve been on the road for so long, they’re at altitude, they’re playing big minutes, they had a 19-point comeback in the last game. It’s 48-hours later like if we just keep playing, we were skeptical that they could keep making the shots…”
Simpson would finish with 26 points to lead all scorers for the Hawks.
To start the second half, UNM’s offense countered St. Joe’s aggressive defense with attacking the basket and getting to the free throw line. The Lobos shot 22-of-28 from the charity stripe and were 18-of-22 in the second half.
“The second half we got back to being really aggressive downhill, and we got a lot of guys that it’s hard to guard when you decide you’re going to go take it to the rim and so we saw the result of that was they had to foul sometimes, which helped us a lot, Haupt said.”
Buljan was UNM’s leading scorer finishing with 27 points and 11 rebounds for his seventeenth double-double of the season. Buljan often used his agility to beat St. Joseph’s Justice Ajogbor off the dribble to get to the basket.
Buljan, a 23% 3-point shooter (5-of-23) on the season coming into this game, also knocked down two 3-pointers.
“I’m glad he made them,” Olen said. “He had a couple other jump shots too. He was forced into those relative to the coverage. I thought he did a nice job of not settling.”
Hall finished the game with 24 points going 9-of-11 from the free throw line. Hall became the all-time leading freshman scorer in Mountain West history with 585 points, breaking the previous record of 564 by UNLV’s Anthony Bennett in 2012-13.
Starting guard Deyton Albury played a limited 15 minutes after still recovering from the flu. He finished with nine points and two assists with no turnovers.
“He’s dying to be out there,” Olen said. “He just couldn’t do it on Sunday. He’s certainly not one hundred percent. We tried to get him really short stints and get him out. Even in his minutes I thought he made a really positive impact. Start of the second half I thought he was terrific.”
The Lobos will prioritize rest and recovery before they take on Tulsa (29-7) who defeated Wichita State 83-79 in the other NIT Quarterfinal. The game is scheduled for Thursday Apr. 2 at the Hinkle Field House in Indianapolis.
