Things were going so well for the Northern New Mexico College mens basketball team in their matchup against Fort Lewis College, that no one could have guessed one team was from the NAIA and the other was from NCAA Division II.
The Eagles (3-0) proved to be the better team Nov. 2 despite classifications, as they outlasted the Skyhawks 76-61 inside Eagle Memorial Gymnasium behind a 16-0 second half run.
Naquwan Solomon led Northern with 17 points, Makye Richard recorded 16 and Tyrique Weaver added 10 more.
“This one feels pretty good, it feels pretty good,” Northern head coach Ryan Cordova said. “That’s a good basketball team. You know how good Fort Lewis teams are and that team is no different, except that they have a lot of new players.”
Offense had carried the Eagles in their first two contests, but a defensive surge in the second half made all the difference in this one.
With Northern leading 58-56 with about eight minutes remaining, Skyhawk turnovers began to come in bunches and Bryce Simmons scored all six of his points with three big layups off turnovers, while Tywaun Walker and Weaver joined in with another theft and score apiece.
The 16-0 run was capped off by yet another steal, this time by Solomon, who took the ball down the court alone for a slam that put Northern ahead for good, 74-58, with under four minutes to play.
“We went back to zone and we wanted to pressure the point guard,” Cordova said. “We put ourselves in position to rebound, number one, and if a ball screen came, we were in good position and we just had another man there. That really gave them fits. When we got those steals by Bryce, Tyrique and Naquwan, that really helped us to separate.”
The Eagles ended the game on an 18-5 run as Fort Lewis went ice cold from the field, in particular from the three-point line. The Skyhawks shot 9-of-32 from the field and 12 percent from beyond the arch in the second half. The suffocating defensive effort put on by the Eagles was no slouch though.
“Defense is our main thing,” Solomon said. “We practice defense first and the offense comes from the defense.”
“It was the defensive intensity, that’s what it was,” Richard added about the scoring run in the second half. “We preach defense all the time. It’s defense, defense, defense and our offense is perfectly fine, so we play defense and it’s just a clean slate. I feel like nobody can beat us when we play defense the right way.”
Aside from the defense, Northern’s presence inside against the bigger Skyhawks’ frontcourt impressed the head coach.
“We didn’t shoot well, but we kept the turnovers down and we rebounded big,” Cordova said. “That was really big because I was worried about the rebounds and that’s a big team. We tried to take that factor out of the equation and speed the game up and take those bigs out of the game.”
Northern out rebounded Fort Lewis 38-36 and Ibrahima Diagne and Solomon both had 10 boards apiece.
It took Northern about 11 minutes to pull themselves together, as Fort Lewis built a 13-point lead with 9:39 remaining in the first half.
The Eagles had no trouble finding open looks but failed to convert on multiple opportunities in the paint. They also had sloppy execution from under their own basket on inbounds plays, turning the ball over multiple times.
“The first half was kind of rough,” Solomon said. “But we stuck together and I wanna say, ‘It was brotherhood,’ and we trusted each other.”
Solomon made the first big momentum play of the game with a block on the defensive end that he turned into a coast-to-coast layup through traffic, all while potentially being fouled on the play. His effort sparked the Northern crowd for the first time all night as the Eagles got within 22-17.
They finally took the lead, 23-22, after a Walker layup that finished another big scoring run at 15-2. Northern shot 31 percent from the field in the first half but improved to 53 percent in the second. It was their worst shooting night from the three-point line in the young season, shooting just 4-of-28.
The win against the larger Fort Lewis should ease the minds of the players and coaches alike as they prepare for a three-game road trip, starting Nov. 8 at Mid-America Christian University (Okla.) and ending Nov. 11 at the University of New Mexico.
“This is just the beginning and if we keep playing defense, we got a chance to win these games,” Solomon said.
Northern will face off with Fort Lewis again Nov. 14, this time on the road.
“I guarantee you that team in a few weeks will be a whole different team,” Cordova said. “Especially in Durango.”
Five players were absent for the victory as Gus Cuch, Larry Morinia III, Zaccheus Jackson, Tomas Rodriguez and Lucas Chavez competed at the Association of American Institutions cross country championships in Bettendorf, Iowa.
Cuch finished 14th overall with a time of 29:21.4 in the 8-kilometer race. The team finished fourth out of five teams.