By Aaron Johnson (@voz_aaron1) – Spear Reporter
SJSU Men’s Basketball (8-11, 1-5 MW) took a tough loss against New Mexico (17-3, 4-2 MW) 95-75 on Wednesday. The story of the game was SJSU’s turnovers as New Mexico scored 25 points off of 18 Spartan turnovers.
“You can’t let a team run offense off of your offense,” Spartans’ head coach Tim Miles said.
New Mexico’s plus/minus was 20 and the Spartans lost the game by 21 points. Turnovers had San Jose State playing from behind all game and they never had a lead the entire game. New Mexico also had 21 points off of fast breaks compared to SJSU’s three.
“It’s hard to win that way in a basketball game,” junior guard Myron Amey Jr. said. “They are ranked for a reason, we have just got to be better as a team.”
SJSU now falls to 1-5 against Mountain West opponents. In order for the Spartans to get a higher seed in the Mountain West tournament they need to come close to winning out during the final stretch of the season.
San Jose State faced a big challenge in going against New Mexico’s guards, who are some of the top performers in the conference. Lobos senior guards Jamal Mashburn Jr., Donovan Dent and graduate student Jaelen House put up 17, 17, 18 points respectfully.
In the second half House went 3-4 from 3-point range and killed the momentum that the Spartans had after they brought the game back within nine.
The top scorer for the Spartans was Amey Jr. putting up 24 points on the game and also grabbing a team leading nine rebounds.
Junior guard Myron Amey Jr. looks to make a play – photo by Christian Vieyra | Spear Editor
SJSU drops another game to a ranked opponent and San Jose State has not beaten a ranked opponent since 1996 against No. 19 Alabama.
With the rest of conference play approaching Tim Miles knows in order to compete with all of the talented teams in the Mountain West, the Spartans will just have to chip away and take the small steps to get better.
“I mean how do you eat an elephant man?” Miles said. “One bite at a time.”
San Jose State’s next game against UNLV (9-9, 2-4 MW) is a must win. If the Spartans want to turn the season around they will need to beat teams like UNLV who are near the bottom of the Mountain West.
San Jose State will host the Rebels on Saturday at 6:00 p.m.