On Friday, tenth-seeded New Mexico kicked off their NCAA Tournament with a 75-66 victory over seventh-seeded Marquette. The Lobos' star guard Donovan Dent had twenty-one points and six assists in an up and down game that also included eight turnovers. The MVP of the game was likely center Nelly Junior Joseph, with nineteen points on seven of ten shooting, to go with seven rebounds.
Marquette's once extremely promising top ten season sputters out with a whimper. All-American Kam Jones struggled to deal with New Mexico's big wings, most prominently Tru Washington and was held to fifteen points. The Golden Eagles close out the year with an 8-9 stretch, as head coach Shaka Smart falls to 5-11 in the NCAA Tournament since he took VCU to the Final Four.
Here are three major takeaways from the game:
1. The battle of the stars ended up lopsided
Midway through the second half, Marquette All-American Kam Jones and New Mexico's Mountain West Player of the Year Donovan Dent were both in the midst of quiet games. To that point, the game belonged to Joseph and Marquette's David Joplin (twenty-eight points, six made threes), and the players tasked with guarding the stars, Washington and Stevie Mitchell of Marquette were winning those battles.
In the final eight and a half minutes of the game, Dent finally began to break free of Mitchell, scoring eleven points the rest of the way. This included a sequence where he sandwiched a transition block in between his two most impressive baskets of the game, as part of a 10-0 kill shot that erased Marquette's final lead of the game and put it out of reach, all in one sequence.
The game was primed for a star to take over, and Dent was up to the task, showing the college basketball world that perhaps he had deserved an All-American nod as well.
2. New Mexico might just be getting started
The Lobos have been red hot since mid-December and rampaged through the Mountain West on their way to the regular season title. And the results still may not be good enough to match the talent. Dent is far from the first small guard outside of a power conference to have the look of a March hero, but he is one of a very select group who is surrounded by top of the line athletes.
Junior Joseph absolutely abused his Marquette counterpart, Ben Gold, fouling him out in twenty-two minutes. Washington gave Jones a better challenge than just about any Big East wing did. CJ Noland would be a quality sixth man on a top twenty team, but fills that role for the Lobos. And while Mustapha Amzil was quiet today, he has a history of big moments against top competition and still managed to draw five fouls.
Most impressively though, the Lobos held up against Marquette's greatest strength. After a nine turnover first half, they ended up giving up the ball just one time less than the Golden Eagles. Washington and Noland combined for zero turnovers in the game.
3. Mountain West March success??
The Mountain West Conference has been chided as a whole for consistent NCAA Tournament underperformance for over a decade, outside of San Diego State's standard excellence. The member schools began to fight back against that narrative last season, with Utah State joining the Aztecs in the second round, a slight, but still notable improvement.
After a rough 0-2 start, in which both of last year's winners suffered blowout losses, New Mexico is joined in the second round by Colorado State, who beat Memphis earlier in the day. It is an encouraging development, but for things to really begin to turn around, it will require one or both to break through on Sunday and makes their way to the Sweet Sixteen.