New Mexico beat San Diego State 68-59 in a 68-possession game Saturday night. I was there. This is what I saw.<\/p>\n
Good defense or bad offense? <\/b><\/p>\n
Before Chase Tapley entered beast mode late in the game, the Lobos were putting up some gaudy defensive stats. The Aztecs weren\u2019t taking many threes and facing the usual New Mexico resistance in the paint. They also committed an abundance of turnovers, finishing with 15. That\u2019s not an absurdly high total for the game, but they all occurred before the 5:39 mark by which point the Aztecs fate was sealed. Eight of these were of the non-steal\/unforced variety, which begs the issue as to how much of San Diego State\u2019s struggles were due to the Lobo defense and how much of it was due to the Aztec playing below it\u2019s usual level (which granted, is not what you\u2019d call an elite level.) <\/p>\n
Determining the answer to this question is, of course, extremely difficult and why it\u2019s dangerous to read too much into one game. The Aztecs were pretty good at taking care of the ball this season, and New Mexico, despite having an effective defense, wasn’t great at forcing them. It’s fair to say New Mexico played defense well, but some of those turnovers fell into their lap.<\/p>\n
Consistency? Consistency!<\/b><\/p>\n
After the game, Steve Alford specifically lauded his team\u2019s consistency over the course of the season. I figured it was the lack of consistency that kept the Lobos from being ranked by the people that seem to value that kind of thing. However, reality indicates otherwise. In 17 games against conference teams, New Mexico had a scoring margin of +177, suggesting they\u2019d lose three of those games. Instead, they lost four, hardly the hallmark of an inconsistent team. <\/p>\n
Looking over New Mexico\u2019s body of work, it\u2019s still hard to imagine why they entered the tourney unranked while UNLV and San Diego State found a home in the polls. Their loss to Santa Clara on Thanksgiving was inexplicable, but using an outcome from November 24 to discredit the Lobos is equally as difficult to understand.<\/p>\n
About Chase Tapley<\/b><\/p>\n
Circling back to the first sentence, Tapley fueled a five-possession stretch with less than three minutes to go where the Aztecs scored 15 points (Chase personally contributed nine of those). If you still doubt why margin of victory is more predictive than close-game performance \u2013 this is it. Despite the video-game like outburst, San Diego State only got within seven after this run. Teams less dominant than New Mexico would have been surrendering a lead at that point, and thus seriously jeopardizing their chance to win. The Lobos suffered no such fate.<\/p>\n
And kudos are due to Tapley \u2013 on a night when the Aztecs\u2019 offensive star Jamaal Franklin was frustrated into a six-turnover performance, Tapley hoisted 39% of his team\u2019s shots while he was in the game and got his 25 points efficiently. That\u2019s something none of his teammates could say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Mexico beat San Diego State 68-59 in a 68-possession game Saturday night. I was there. This is what I saw. Good defense or bad offense? Before Chase Tapley entered beast mode late in the game, the Lobos were putting up some gaudy defensive stats. The Aztecs weren\u2019t taking many threes and facing the usual […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}