WAC tourney run ends on fumes

Saturday, March 16

Las Vegas, Nev.

7 P.M.

Grand Canyon

20-13

New Mexico State

30-4

Grand Canyon

New Mexico St.

3/16/2019 9:55:00 PM | Men's Basketball, Paul Coro

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New Mexico State crushes GCU 89-57 in title game

By: <a href="http://gculopes.com/index.aspx?path=coro">Paul Coro</a>

LAS VEGAS – With "Higher and Higher" blasting throughout Orleans Arena, the Grand Canyon players could not have felt much lower Saturday night as they filed out to an audible backdrop of New Mexico State's net-cutting ceremony cheers.

It was out of sight, just as the WAC Tournament championship proved to be out of reach for GCU. The Lopes emptied their tank in rallying to two tourney wins that put them in the title game, only to play on fumes as the horsepower of the Aggies zoomed by for an 89-57 victory that sends NMSU to the NCAA tournament.

The Aggies (30-4) have proven superior by beating the Lopes (20-13) in six consecutive meetings but the championship blowout was no indication of how the gap closed during two tight in-season games. After beating GCU by two and three points in January and February, NMSU tied the longest active winning streak in the nation at 19 by inflicting its version of March Madness on the Lopes.

Despite GCU's 8-0 start that had thousands of Lopes fans rocking in the first four minutes, NMSU went on an offensive tear that had it leading 26-21 after scoring on nine consecutive possessions. It never stopped from there, as the Aggies made a tournament-record 17 of 39 3-pointers and devastated the Lopes with depth.

NMSU's bench outscored GCU's bench 50-9 to help the Aggies win their seventh WAC Tournament title in eight years.

"I'm extremely proud of our guys, but we just ran out of gas," GCU head coach Dan Majerle said. "As I said, New Mexico State earned this win. They played terrific basketball. We ran out of gas. Three games in three nights, our guys have a short rotation. The guys that have played just didn't have it tonight and I can't blame them. It's not because of effort or anything like that. We just didn't have it."

NMSU had 10-0 and 9-0 runs in the first half as the Lopes were unable to keep up in transition defense or half-court rotations. The Aggies led 41-30 at halftime before the Lopes made one last push early in the second half, when a pair of post-up scores by sophomore Alessandro Lever sparked a 6-0 run and GCU was on its way to pulling within seven on a steal and breakaway by junior Oscar Frayer.

NMSU junior guard Trevelin Queen, who was WAC Tournament MVP after a 27-point title game, blocked Frayer's shot and the Aggies quickly turned it into a Terrell Brown transition 3 for a crushing five-point swing.

"With three games in three nights, it's hard to match up with a team that can keep running in guys and talented guys and that's why they're very good," Majerle said. "It's not so much preparing. We know what we had to do. They just kept running bodies at us and they were fresher than we were."

GCU junior guard Carlos Johnson was coming off consecutive career-high scoring games of 31 and 35 points that earned him an All-WAC Tournament team spot but he was swarmed and exhausted as he was kept to nine points in 27 minutes.

After making 21 of 47 shots from 3-point range in the first two rounds, GCU went 7 for 31 on 3s and leaned on them heavily for 18 for their 30 first-half shots.

Lever led GCU with 17 points but NMSU used a 10-man main rotation to overwhelm the Lopes, who had six players accounting for 87 percent of the playing time.

"We had a pretty good start, but we couldn't keep with the rhythm," Lever said. "They are deeper than us. We played hard, but we didn't have it today. We tried to play as hard as we could. We came back from two other really important games, and we didn't have it."

Beyond Queen's six 3-pointers, fellow Aggies reserve Ivan Aurrecoechea hurt GCU nearly as much as he did in the teams' first meeting, when the 6-foot-8 junior power forward scored 28. This time, he made his first six shots on deep posts and follows on his way to racking up 16 points and eight rebounds in 17 minutes of action

"The theme of the night was keep coming at them in waves," NMSU head coach Chris Jans said. "We've been playing a lot of guys all year long. We talked a lot in the last 24 hours that we're built for this. Our team is built for three games in three days."

Or as Queen put it, "We're all gas, no brakes."

GCU lost by a double-digit margin for only the fourth time this season but three occurred since the Lopes' lost senior Gerard Martin to injury as the team sat in a first-place tie with NMSU at the WAC midpoint. GCU was 7-1 in WAC play and went 5-6 against conference opponents since then. In a season defined by close-call losses, a blowout loss denied the Lopes from completing a dream run.

"It's really disappointing, especially to go out like that and get blown out," said Finke, a graduate transfer who came from Illinois to try for his first NCAA tournament visit and play with his freshman brother, Tim. "It's not what we expected at all. We really thought we could go out and beat them. New Mexico State is a really good team. They might win some games in the (NCAA) tournament as well.

"It's definitely going to sting for a while."

Follow Paul Coro on Twitter: @paulcoro.