Richard Anderson photo
New Mexico coach Steve Alford reacts to a technical foul against him Saturday against the Cowboys.
By Richard Anderson
Wyoming Sports.org
New Mexico coach Steve Alford showed his emotions with a resounding yell, along with aggressive bearhugs of players and coaches after his Lobos held off Wyoming 74-73 on Saturday at the Arena-Auditorium.
You can’t blame him.
New Mexico hadn’t won a league title since 1994, and just like that last one, it did it on the road.
The Lobos, 21-10, 12-4 in the Mountain West, earned a share of the conference regular-season title with Utah and BYU.
“This team really has learned how to win and win differently,” Alford said. “I just couldn’t be happier. This is our first league championship in 16 years; it’s the first one since we joined the Mountain West. We’re obviously very excited about it.”
In his second year at the helm, Alford said the Lobos are developing a championship way of thinking.
“We’ve been close. We‘ve had a lot of second places and a lot of upper-division places,” Alford said. To do this in year two -- 11 wins last year in the league and 12 this year -- it’s been great. It’s great for our young guys. Winning kind of breeds winning.”
Tony Danridge led the Lobos with 29 points -- his second straight game that he has scored 29. Danridge finished 14-of-20 from the field.
“If he is not putting up MVP numbers, I don’t know who is,“ Alford said. “He has been tremendous.”
As far as Wyoming coach Heath Schroyer is concerned, Danridge is a stud.
“When you have a fifth-year senior who has been in the program for that long and you are playing for a championship, you expect him to step up and he had 29," Schroyer said.
Danridge also had 29 points in his last outing on Tuesday in the 77-71 win over Utah.
“It was one of those nights. He put together a good week,” said Wyoming senior Brandon Ewing, who scored 16 points but couldn’t get his last-second runner to fall. “He’s a fifth-year senior and he knows what it takes to win. I’m sure he wants to go out a winner, too.”
Danridge finished 10-of-14 from the field, with a variety of shots from the outside and down low. Schroyer said they wanted Danridge to shoot jump shots because he is tough to guard when he is going to the rim.
“He’s so strong and athletic,” Schroyer said. “He’s probably the best athlete in the league. We wanted him to shoot the pull-up jumper. He made enough of them.”
A couple of other unsung heroes for the Lobos on Saturday were seniors Chad Toppert and Roman Martinez.
Toppert, one of the top long-range shooters in the country, was just 1-of-8 from the field, but his lone basket was a big one. It came with 1 minute, 21 seconds left and it proved to be the game-winner.
“Top (Toppert) couldn’t make a shot all night and he makes a huge shot late in the game,” Alford said.
Ewing said he was surprised that Toppert had a tough night, yet surprised on the one shot that he did make.
“Anything he shoots, you think is going in, but on that one, I didn’t think it was going in because it was out of his game plan, his nature," Ewing said. “When he put it on the floor, I figured it would come off the rim and Tyson (Johnson) would come up with the rebound and we would be up one and they would start fouling.”
Martinez scored 15 points on 5 of 8 3-point shooting. The rest of the team was just 2-of-14 from beyond the 3-point arc.
“We got caught on a couple of screens, but on a couple of them, we were right there; he’s a good shooter,” Schroyer said.
In the end, all the Wyoming coach could say was hats off to the Lobos.
“It was well-deserved. They are a championship caliber team,” Schroyer said.
Alford, meanwhile, said they were going to enjoy this win all of the way back to Albuquerque and possibly all of the way to the NCAA Tournament, regardless of next week’s MWC tourney.
“We win our league and our league is the sixth or seventh best league in the country," Alford said. “I hear about all of these other leagues and stuff, but I don’t care if you are tied with four or five teams in your league. If it’s the sixth or seventh best league in the country and you win it, we’re league champs.
“We have played really good basketball since mid-December and hopefully that gets looked at. We go 12-4 in a great league, and if that doesn’t get you in, it is going to be hard to get in.”
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