Pepperdine Misses Its Shot at New Mexico

The road is a tough place to win, doubly tough if it leads to The Pit, home of the University of New Mexico’s basketball team.

Ask Arizona and Wyoming, two teams in the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. tournament that have lost in University Arena, the Pit’s formal name, where New Mexico is 18-1 this season.

But don’t ask Pepperdine Coach Jim Harrick, whose team lost Thursday night to the Lobos, 86-75, in the first round of the National Invitation Tournament.

New Mexico improved its record to 21-13. Pepperdine finished the season at 17-13.

“I don’t know if the arena beat us,” Harrick said. “We still had some shots we should have made in the second half.”

Don’t ask New Mexico Coach Gary Colson, either. Colson, Harrick’s predecessor at Pepperdine, said he didn’t think the crowd of 7,241, which raised the decibel level to a din during New Mexico’s second-half comeback, was the difference, either. The fans were loud, even though the crowd was said to be the smallest in the history of the 17,100-seat arena, built in 1966.

Colson said the howling of the Lobo fans did “not necessarily intimidate Pepperdine. It raises us to a different level.”

The Waves, who came out as flat as a New Mexico mesa, fell behind, 11-4, and then came back to take a 43-40 halftime lead. They were sparked by 8-of-8 shooting and 16 points from reserve forward Dexter Howard, who finished the night with 20 points.

Pepperdine increased its lead to 49-42 early in the second half, but in the next seven minutes the Lobos went on an 11-2 run to take control.

The run started with a three-point shot by Hunter Greene, who scored a team-high 25 points.

After a Pepperdine basket, Charlie Thomas made two slam dunks, one at the end of a fast break. And after a Pepperdine timeout, Greene jammed at the end of another fast break to tie it, 51-51.

Then Thomas, who finished with 20 points, hit a jumper in the lane to give the Lobos a 53-51 edge. New Mexico never trailed after that.

Pepperdine did narrow the gap to 61-60 on a short baseline jumper by Howard. But Thomas, who scored only six points in the first half, followed that with a slam off a rebound, and that seemed to take the life out of Pepperdine.

“Charlie Thomas is that kind of player,” Colson said. “He sleeps for a while, then comes to life, and he’s a monster. I chewed him out during a timeout. Maybe that helped.”

Pepperdine could have used some help from Levy Middlebrooks in the second half.

Middlebrooks missed all seven of his shots in the second half and finished with 9 points on 4-of-17 shooting and 1 free throw.

Lewis, who made 9 of 21 shots, including 2 three-pointers, led all scorers with 28 points, but many of his 19 second-half points came late in the game after New Mexico had padded its lead.

Harrick said that even during the second-half stretch, when New Mexico overtook the Waves, “we had good shots. They play very well in this arena.”