New Mexico State at Nevada
February 7, 2009
Game Notes:
- With the 62-60 loss to New Mexico State on Saturday, Nevada fell to 13-10 overall on the season and 6-4 in WAC play. It marked just Nevada’ s fourth WAC home loss in its last 27 games.
- It was also Nevada’s second consecutive loss by five points or less and the Wolf Pack’s first back-to-back WAC home losses since falling to Louisiana Tech and SMU in January of 2002.
- Sophomore Armon Johnson led the team with 16 points. It marked the eighth time this year that he has led the team in scoring, the second consecutive game and the third time in Nevada’s last four contests.
- Johnson was 4-of-6 from three-point land in the game, setting his career bests for three-pointers made and attempted. He also added a game-high six assists.
- Freshman Luke Babbitt was the only other Wolf Pack player in double figures for scoring with 14 points. With the 14 points, Babbitt now has 380 points on the season, which ranks fifth on Nevada’s freshman scoring list. He passed Armon Johnson on the list tonight. Johnson turned in 379 points in 2007-08.
- Freshman Dario Hunt led the team with seven rebounds, the third time this year that he has paced the team in rebounding.
- Hunt also blocked five shots in the game, one off his career high of six. With 52 blocks this year, he has now moved into fourth on Nevada’s single-season blocks chart, passing the 51 that Nick Fazekas had in 2004-05.
- Nevada turned in season lows for free throws made (5), attempted (11) and free throw percentage (.455) in the game.
- The Wolf Pack outrebounded New Mexico State 39-36, the 12th straight opponent the Wolf Pack has outrebounded. The team is now 10-6 on the year when outrebounding its opponents.
- Nevada returns to action on Thursday, Feb. 12, traveling to San Jose State. That game will tip off at 7 p.m. Pacific Time and will be televised locally by KAME-TV 21. It can also be heard on Nevada’s radio flagship, ESPN 630 AM, and its radio affiliates throughout the state with Ryan Radtke calling the action.
Nevada Quotes
Freshman Luke Babbitt
On the loss:
“We started off pretty well. We weren’t able to sustain it. Give credit to New Mexico State. They played well.”
“We started off good for about 10 minutes. New Mexico State picked it up and we didn’t respond.”
On the difference between the road and home:
“We might play looser on the road, but we have to work on that. We need to protect our homecourt.”
On the final play:
“Armon got the offensive rebound and made a good pass. There were just a few seconds left. I got a good look, but it just didn’t go down.”
Sophomore Armon Johnson
On the loss:
“We got outplayed by a pretty good team. We couldn’t finish it out.”
“Losing is hard. Losing is hard for any competitor. It just makes us really mad.”
On New Mexico State’s pressure:
“We’ve seen pressure before. We had some misreads and some miscommunications at times.”
On the final play:
“They all collapsed in the lane. I tried to get a shot off and missed it. It’s unfortunate.”
Junior Joey Shaw
On the loss:
“We made some mistakes. They capitalized on them. They made some big shots.”
Nevada head coach Mark Fox
On the loss:
“It was a disappointing loss. Credit New Mexico State. We played well at times, but we didn’t quite play well enough.”
On Nevada’s defense:
“We defended better. We were able to get a lot of offense off our defense.”
“In the second half, they shot 60 percent. That’s not good enough.”
On Nevada’s turnovers:
“We created our turnovers. I was really disappointed in some of our decisions with the ball tonight. We had some turnovers that were extremely costly.”
On moving forward:
“We’ll use this to get better. It was certainly a disappointing week for our team. But we’ll use this to get better like we always do.”
On the last play:
“We had looks for Armon and Luke. If that was taken away, Armon was going to take it inside, which we did. We were hoping to get to the line and didn’t.”
New Mexico State Quotes
New Mexico State head coach Marvin Menzies
On the win:
“I’ll tell you what I can feel the energy. It was a very enjoyable game to watch. There’s no doubt that there’s a sense of energy here. All the guys played well. They really stuck together.”
On the defensive press:
“We knew we had to mix it up. We felt like we can keep them off balance. But to be honest I don’t know how much the press worked as much as just the solid zone. They started hitting the threes and I got a little worried there.”
On Nevada guard Armon Johnson’s three-point shooting:
“Armon did a good job shooting the ball tonight. Those are big threes. Those are threes that can easily make me go out of my strategy. Luckily we were just able to hang on.”
