If you miss half of your free throws and two-thirds of your layups in a close game, maybe you don’t deserve to win.

UNM men’s basketball got one more shot against their biggest Mountain West Conference rival San Diego State and were in a tight one-possession game down the stretch.

A heroic 20 point effort from Deyton Albury was not enough to overcome 13 missed free throws and 17 missed layups as UNM fell 64-62 in the semi-final round of the Mountain West Conference Tournament.

Despite the poor free throw shooting and inability to finish at the rim, UNM had its chances to send the Aztecs to overtime or win the game.

The Lobos were down 62-58 with 55 seconds left when Deyton Albury was fouled and made two free throws.

After a BJ Davis missed 3-pointer on the ensuing possession, Albury attacked the basket and scored over a cluster of Aztec defenders in the paint to tie the game at 62 with 25 seconds.

Unfortunately for UNM, history repeated itself as SDSU put the ball in BJ Davis’ hands, and Davis buried the game-winner, mirroring his heroics from the season’s first matchup where his go ahead basket was the decisive blow to give the Aztecs the win. Davis finished with 12 points to go along with 6 rebounds.

“I have a lot of confidence in our guys,” Eric Olen said after the game. “I expected us to get a stop. I know BJ’s a good player. He’s hit a bunch of clutch shots all season long. We saw it first hand at Viejas so again credit to him. I think DA is a good on-ball defender. When we got DA switched back onto him I actually felt pretty good about potentially limiting the depth of his drive and it being more of a jump shot, but he was able to get pretty deep and make a good play.”

UNM’s season-long woes at the line reached a new low tonight; the team shot its worst percentage of the year, converting just 15 of 28 free throws. Missed free throws arguably cost UNM losses at Nevada and Utah State where the Lobos also missed key free throws late in the second half of close games.

“Obviously, it hurts,” Luke Haupt said who finished with 7 points and 8 rebounds. “You never want to miss a free throw, you never want to miss that many free throws especially in a tight game. There’s so many things that we could have done better throughout the entire game. I think we’re not sitting on one thing…”

UNM was also unable to have efficiency scoring the ball at the basket as the Lobos were 9-of-26 at layups at the rim.

“They might have done a better job of making plays on the ball or being vertical,” Olen said. I didn’t think it was a huge scheme difference. That’s what they do. They’re hard to score against at the rim…”

SDSU’s defensive game plan was to take away UNM’s two biggest playmakers Jake Hall and Tomislav Buljan. Hall finished with only three points on 1-of-9 shooting–his worst scoring performance since he scored two points against Boise State on Dec. 30.

Buljan faced double teams against SDSU’s defense all night, and often times the Aztecs sent two defenders to box him out and keep him off the offensive glass. Buljan finished with 8 points and 10 rebounds, but his rebound count was much lower than the 14 and 18 that he had against SDSU in the first two games.

“For Buljan, he killed us at New Mexico, both games really,” Aztec center Magoon Gwath said. “He had double-doubles both games. He had 18 (rebounds) and I think 14 the first game. We just eliminated him off the glass that was our main focus (with) two guys boxing out if we had to.”

Gwath finished with a team high 17 points, six rebounds and two blocks for SDSU.

The series between UNM and SDSU concludes with the Lobos leading 53-48.

UNM will await to see whether it will get a post-season bid to the NIT, an announcement that will come on Sunday at 7 pm MT.