Cohesiveness, maturity set New Mexico apart

Buy-in: An informal agreement to support a decision.

No phrase better describes New Mexico’s basketball team, whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts by an Albuquerque mile. The Lobos are champions of both the regular-season and tournament titles in the Mountain West because no one came close to matching their cohesiveness.

No team was as much as, well, a team.

“It’s the reason they have won 29 games and have an opportunity to get a great NCAA Tournament seed,” UNLV coach Dave Rice said. “It is a group that has been together, that has great chemistry, a core of guys that have played together for a long time.

“They have matured, grown and developed. They don’t care who gets the basket. That’s just part of maturing as a program.”

Maturity helped bring New Mexico its 63-56 win against the Rebels on Saturday afternoon at the Thomas & Mack Center, earning the Lobos the league’s automatic NCAA berth and making an already strong argument for a high seed this week even more sturdy.

Think about it: Kendall Williams was named conference Player of the Year, and Alex Kirk was an all-defensive team member this season. Neither was brought to the postgame news conference Saturday, giving way to all-tournament team member Cameron Bairstow and Most Valuable Player Tony Snell.

“A special team,” New Mexico coach Steve Alford said. “I will put our starting five up against anybody. They understand winning. They understand the ebb and flow of a game, the importance of defensive stops, getting to the free-throw line. Whatever it is, they have a really good understanding of it.”

The Lobos run an offense designed to get their players shots. The Rebels run one designed to get their players the ball and then hope they can make a play for themselves.

There is a huge difference, one that decided the game in the final eight or so minutes.

Snell can be exhausting to watch, one of the better players nationally running off the sort of baseline screens that led to him scoring 21 points Saturday, including 13 straight as the Lobos took control late. He made 5 of 8 3-pointers, and I’m fairly sure none of the five hit a speck of rim.

Snell and Williams pretty much run figure-8s along the baseline for 40 minutes, dragging defenders into screens set by Kirk and Bairstow. There is movement in those screens but not enough to expect many infractions called during a conference tournament final.

UNLV defenders spent too much time expecting — begging — for moving screens to be called and not enough time staying with Snell.

Every time UNLV made a mistake — looked for a foul and lost sight of a shooter, went under a screen instead of going over, went over instead of going under — New Mexico stuck a jumper and sunk the dagger in a few inches deeper.

The Rebels also didn’t help themselves at the other end.

They shot 31 3-pointers and stopped sharing the ball. Snell and Williams combined for 33 points on 22 shots; UNLV guards Bryce Dejean-Jones and Katin Reinhardt combined for 30 points on 32 shots.

Sensing a pattern?

The Rebels came out dressed in hooded sweatshirts like a prize fighter might enter the ring. Problem is, UNLV lost the decision on all levels when it came to being tougher and more physical.

New Mexico is good defensively in a way that it has good bigs to contest shots at the rim and is long enough on the perimeter to bother all sorts of jumpers. In three of their five losses, the Lobos allowed 64 or fewer points. They held the Rebels to 34 percent shooting, although many misses came when UNLV fell back into the ugly pattern of shooting quickly in favor of another swing of the ball.

It all led to a second win for New Mexico over UNLV this season, to awaiting word today where the Lobos and Rebels will be seeded in the NCAA bracket, to learning where each will begin the madness in a few short days.

“I think we deserve a No. 2 seed or higher,” Snell said. “We proved ourselves all year.”

They did so again Saturday, showing everyone what long has been more fact than fiction.

New Mexico: Best team. Best coach. Best concept of how to win.

Oh, yeah. Get used to it. The Lobos on Saturday didn’t start a senior, and yet all five are 21 or older.

It sure pays to buy in, huh?

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on “Gridlock,” ESPN 1100 and 98.9 FM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.