Final Chapter Opens as UNM Begins Mountain West Play vs. San Jose State
San Jose State guard Colby Garland drives to the basket against Stanford on Dec. 13. Garland is second in the Mountain West Conference in scoring (18.9 ppg) and fourth in assists (4.6 apg) Photo: San Jose State Athlletics
The last ride through the Mountain West Conference’s current lineup begins Saturday for UNM men’s basketball, and it starts at home.
San Jose State (5-6) visits The Pit for the league opener, bringing another Tim Miles’ coached team that nearly stole a win in Albuquerque last season. On Dec. 4, 2024, SJSU led Richard Pitino Jr.’s UNM squad for over 30 minutes and late into the second half, before the Lobos closed the game on a 22-8 run and were saved by some Donovan Dent heroics:
This season, the Spartans are winners of two of their last three. They are coming off an 86-82 loss to Stanford in a game where the Spartans trailed by 14 with 3:34 to play, then went on a 10-0 run, and had the ball down two with 24 seconds left and a chance to tie or take the lead before turning it over.
Miles only has four returners from last season, but this year’s Spartans still follow his familiar blueprint: slow tempo and grind-it-out basketball. The Spartans sit at No. 337 in Ken Pom in the adjusted tempo, and average just nine fast break points per game.
SJSU is also not a high-volume 3-point shooting team. Two thirds of San Jose State’s shot attempts come from inside the arc, and the Spartans take a high-volume of mid-range 2-point shots away from the rim.
The graph on the left shows that SJSU has one of the better mid-range 2-point shooting percentages in the country at 45% on longer 2-point shots outside the paint. The second graph shows San Jose State’s shot distribution, with 315 of SJSU’s 558 shots coming inside the painted area.
The Spartans are led by the Mountain West Conference’s second leading scorer; No. 0 Colby Garland at 18.9 points and 4.6 assists per game. The 6-foot junior is a highly efficient offensive threat, logging over 34 minutes per game with a 56% effective field-goal percentage. Watch Garland put in a season-high 30 points on a near-perfect 11-of-13 shooting performance on Nov. 8 against UC Santa Barbara.
“He’s able to get to the mid-range,” Eric Olen said about Garland’s effectiveness on offense. “He’s got a unique game in terms of some of the shots, like little floaters and push shots and different things he’s able to get to especially going left… shots that for a lot of people you feel like 'Oh we’ll live with that one,' but maybe you can’t with him…”
San Jose State is also one of the better offensive rebounding teams in the country, coming in at No. 77 in Ken Pom offensive rebound percentage. The Spartans are fourth in the Mountain West in offensive rebounds per game with 12.4.
A lot of SJSU’s offensive rebounding comes from 6-foot-8 senior forward No. 32 Yaphet Moundi, who averages 5.5 offensive rebounds per game. Mouandi scores 13.5 points and grabs 8.1 rebounds per contest, has five double-doubles this season, and ranks 56th in Ken Pom for fouls drawn per 40 minutes.
“…(He) has a really good feel for what we call second pivot, so he plays with a lot patience when he gets his back to the basket,” Olen said. "He’s not the biggest guy, so he does a good job of creating angles and getting himself to the free throw line, so we want to make him score over us and not allow those angles, keep him off the free-throw line, off the glass. If we don’t do that, he’s someone who could give us real problems.”
The 3-Point Shooters
While SJSU does not shoot the 3-ball in high volume as a team, they do have a few guys that knock down perimeter shots at a high percentage.
No. 13 Jermaine Washington, a 6-foot-4 sophomore guard, is SJSU’s third-leading scorer at 11.5 points per game and shoots 40% from three on more than five attempts per game.
No. 99 Sadraque NgaNga, a 6-foot-10 senior forward, averages 6.1 points, 4.7 rebounds, and 40 percent shooting from three (11-of-28)
No. 7 Pasha Goodarzi, a 6-foot-3 redshirt sophomore, has played four games this season due to injury and is shooting 54 percent from three, including 3-for-5 vs. Stanford.
Other Impact Players
No. 1 Adrian Myers, a 6-foot-6 redshirt sophomore, is averaging 12.5 points over SJSU’s last four games, highlighted by 20 points and 7 rebounds vs. San Diego, and 14 points vs. Stanford.
No. 4 Melvin Bell, a 6-foot-4 freshman, is a high energy player that averages four points and three rebounds per game. He is third on the team in free throw attempts with 21 through 11 games.
UNM’s Offense
Injuries and player availability are the first two questions for UNM’s offense on Saturday. Starters Tomislav Buljan and Chris Howell exited early against Florida Gulf Coast and did not play in the second half due to undisclosed injuries, while Kevin Patton did not play due to personal reasons.
Eric Olen would not provide any updates about Buljan, Howell or Patton during media availability, but the Mountain West’s public availability reports show Buljan and Howell are Questionable while Patton is Out.
Whether Buljan plays or not, the Lobos should be able to get back to shooting more shots at the rim rather than chucking up early 3-pointers shots like they did at times vs. FGCU.
After UNM took steps forward in games vs. Santa Clara VCU with a more balanced shot selection of 3-pointers and shots in the paint, the Lobos hoisted 34 3-pointers last Sunday compared to just 18 in a 71-68 win over VCU.
“We want to get a good shot on every possession," Olen said. "It’s not necessarily X number of 2s or free throws, or 3s…What the defense is doing has a big impact on that, and we don’t want to totally be dictated too, but we want to find the best solutions for us relative to coverages and schemes.”
San Jose State allows teams to shoot 66 percent at shots around the rim and the Spartans offer very little rim protection, ranking 348th in defensive block percentage with less than two team blocks per game.
San Jose State’s defense is 70th in the country in defensive turnover percentage and force teams into 12.9 turnovers per game. UNM turned it over a combined 27 times in its last two games vs. FGCU and VCU. Limiting turnovers is area Olen wants to see improvement.
Bottom Line
This is a must win Quad 4 game at home for UNM with San Jose State being No. 242 in the NET and No. 181 in Ken Pom. This game should have some intriguing matchups, with San Jose’s Garland against UNM’s guards Uriah Tenette and Deyton Albury being a battle of skilled and athletic perimiter players. Moundi has nearly identical rebounding and scoring statistics to Buljan, and could give UNM some fits inside with is physicality. UNM needs to control the glass on defense, put pressure and score points at the rim on offense, and be ready to fight off a scrappy Spartan team that’s had late, second-half comebacks in their last two-games.
