Andrew Murawa is an RTC correspondent. He filed this report after the Round of 64 NCAA Tournament game between #3 New Mexico and #14 Harvard in Salt Lake City.
Three Key Takeaways.
- The Great Equalizer. For a program with no NCAA Tournament wins in their history, you need a special performance to get your first. And if you ain’t got great size and athleticism, there’s one thing you can do make up for your weaknesses: knock down threes. And Harvard did that in abundance tonight, getting five threes from Laurent Rivard and three from Christian Webster, mostly all on drive-and-kick opportunities. But eight threes isn’t enough to pull off an upset of this size and the Crimson did plenty of other things to get themselves over the top. Perhaps it was in part due to the fact that some early threes opened things up inside for them, but as it turns out, Harvard wound up shooting 14-of-24 from inside the three-point arc, getting scoring from Wesley Saunders, Kenyatta Smith and Siyani Chambers inside. The three-point shooting will get the pub, but the Crimson played a complete game.
- Inconsistent Scoring From Guards. I’ve harped on it all season long, but these New Mexico guards are awful hard to trust. When things are going good for them, the trio of Kendall Williams, Tony Snell and Hugh Greenwood are about as fine of a trio as you’ll find in college basketball. But when things aren’t going well, they can get hard to notice. Take Williams for example. You probably remember Williams going for 46, or maybe you remember him sending in a 360 dunk to seal the Lobos Mountain West tournament title game against UNLV. Or even an inexplicable MW Player of the Year award. Tonight he was nearly invisible en route to just eight points, along with no assists. And Snell? He was much better than Williams, but after the Mountain West tournament he was the toast of the town. Tonight just 4-of-12 shooting and 1-of-6 from deep for nine points. All told, the three New Mexico guards combined for 17 points on 21 field goal attempts with just four assists.
- Mountain West Gone South. We’ve heard all about how the Mountain West is one of the best conference’s in the country, second in the RPI, deep and talented and with several teams capable of making runs in March. Well, to put it nicely, today was not a good day for the conference. The teams with arguably the best chances of making deep runs – New Mexico and UNLV – bowed out. Coupled with Boise State’s loss last night, the conference’s only bit of good news was Colorado State’s win over Missouri today. San Diego State plays tomorrow, but for a conference with an abysmal record in NCAA Tournament play, this has been a terribly depressing couple of days for the conference.
Star of the Game. Kenyatta Smith, Harvard. On a team built around a quick point guard and a bunch of three-point shooters, you need someone to do the dirty work, especially against a team with as much size inside as New Mexico features. And tonight, Smith did that dirty work with pride, standing up to Alex Kirk and Cameron Bairstow time and time again as the Lobos repeatedly tried to take advantage of the undersized Crimson inside. Kirk and Bairstow got their points, although not often in the 19 minutes Smith played, and Smith made them work for it. And, despite picking up his fourth foul early in the second half, Smith stuck around long enough to make some key plays down the stretch.
Sights & Sounds. Rooting for the Underdog. The crowd in Salt Lake City was ready to throw all of its support behind Southern in the afternoon session when they gave Gonzaga all they could handle. Likewise, in the night session, as Harvard stuck around longer and longer, the large group of New Mexico fans in the building to support their team were quickly drowned out by everybody else throwing their lot in with the Crimson. As Harvard grabbed their final rebound to effectively seal the game, the crowd erupted in cheers, with even a healthy portion of the disappointed New Mexico faithful offering up their applause.
Quotable. Harvard’s Tommy Amaker: “I’m exceptionally proud of our guys. They had to believe and we talked about preparation, we talked about passion and we talked about belief. We battled a really good basketball team in a tough environment.”
What’s Next? Harvard moves on to face Arizona on Saturday at 6:10 PM ET with a chance to double the numbers of NCAA Tournament wins in their program’s history. New Mexico will have to find a way to deal with their shortcomings in the offseason, but the majority of their roster should be coming back next season when the Lobos will again be one of the preseason favorites in the Mountain West.