ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.—New Mexico coach Steve Alford finally found pleasure in his team’s defensive effort.
For Air Force, it was pure misery.
J.R. Giddens scored 15 points and had 12 rebounds and New Mexico took advantage of Air Force’s worst shooting of the season to beat the Falcons, 59-44, Saturday.
Giddens got his fourth double-double in the last six games as New Mexico (15-4, 2-2 MWC) equaled its win total of last season. Air Force (10-7, 2-2) never got its offense untracked and hit just 11 of 40 shots (27.5 percent).
New Mexico had blown double-digit leads in conference losses to San Diego State and TCU over the past eight days, but the Lobos never let up on their defensive pressure against the Falcons.
“For us to hold them to 27 percent … says a lot about what we did defensively,” said Alford. “I couldn’t be more pleased. That’s an area that we’ve struggled with in the last several games.”
The Falcons, who two weeks ago scored just 36 points in a 58-36 loss to Utah, had just two field goals in the game’s first 13 minutes.
“We shoot the ball well,” said first-year AFA coach Jeff Reynolds. “I know we were 0-for-12, 0-for-15. I know six of them were pretty good looks that didn’t fall. Shots fall (and) all of a sudden the game is a little different.”
But the Falcons’ shots never fell consistently and New Mexico, which also had trouble scoring early, eventually found some offensive rhythm.
Anwar Johnson was the only AFA player in double figures with 10 points, including 8-for-11 at the free throw line. Tim Anderson, the Falcons’ leading scorer averaging 15 points a game, was held to five points.
New Mexico snapped a two-game losing streak and under first-year coach Steve Alford has won as many games as it did last year under Ritchie McKay, who was fired just before the end of the 2006-07 season.
The game’s first five minutes were more reminiscent of a soccer match than a basketball game. Neither team scored through the first 4 1/2 minutes, before Giddens finally snapped the zeros-are-wild start with a layup off a steal with 14:43 left in the opening half.
Before Giddens’ scoop layup found the range, the teams had combined to miss 11 field goals and four free throws.
Air Force hit just 1 of its 15 shots, a 3-pointer by reserve guard Andrew Henke at the 14:10 mark. Remarkably, that gave the Falcons their only lead as New Mexico was matching the Falcons miss-for-miss early on.
At one point the two teams were a combined 4 of 26 from the field.
Air Force went nearly seven more minutes before getting its second field goal, a layup by Keith Maren with 7:18 left in the first half. By then, New Mexico’s offense had started to find some flow and back-to-back 3-pointers by Darren Prentice and Chad Toppert gave the Lobos a 16-6 lead.
Roman Martinez scored 10 of his 13 points in the first half and Prentice closed out the half with back-to-back drives to the basket for a 32-17 Lobos lead.
“Roman gives us energy to begin with and in the first half he took very good shots and did a good job defensively. Darren put together a nice half,” Alford said.
But the biggest difference, said Alford, was Giddens, who under Alford has developed into a picture of consistency at both ends of the floor.
“J.R. did a great job defensively and I think our team really feeds off that just because of who he is as a player,” Alford said.
