Not to sound cock or that I actually do know a ton about New Mexico hoops, but I was right that if the Lobos are in a slow paced game they could be in trouble. Also, as one of the commenter's put in the open thread the Lobos play to the level of their competition, or have been for their past few games. They beat Utah in overtime, barely beat Colorado State, and Air Force.
That could be lack of focus or lead to an early MWC tournament exit or even worse that they get bounced early on in the NCAA tournament since they should be no worse then a four seed. TCU was able to hang around because of the slow pace and that New Mexico was having a bad night shooting the ball especially from the line and three point shooting. New Mexico was only 50 percent from the line and was eight of twenty-two from behind the arc.
Just by looking at the box score New Mexico had more rebounds, offensive rebounds, blocks, steals, and 12 more free throw attempts then the Horned Frogs. More on the Lobo dominance in the four factors to winning chart:
Not sure if New Mexico thought that they could just walk in and beat the bad TCU team, but to me it seems more of a trend that the Lobos play to their level of competition. This also means they play up which is evident in their recent win over BYU. It took TCU to having a late first half lead for the Lobos woke up in this game to kind of pull away for this win.
TCU did their best to try to win this game at The Pit they had five guys in double figures, but when it came down to it they were unable to slow down Darrington Hobson who had 20 points or the loan senior Roman Martinez who had 19 points.
The Lobos will have to sit on this one until next week when the conference tournament gets underway where they will play Wyoming or Air Force where the Lobos need a big win to put these types of performances behind them.