Dec. 1988 game at the Pit: one of the top 12 games

[NMSooner'80]

Grammer: Friday night is the 1,000th Lobo game in the Pit. Here are the 10 best.

There have ben 999 Lobo men's basketball games played in the Pit. So there's plenty to choose from. But here are the 10 (or so) best, as chosen by the

www.abqjournal.com

Tonight is the 1,000th game for the UNM Lobos at the Pit in Albuquerque (opened in 1966). The OU-UNM game in December of '88 (Stacey King and Mookie Blaylock were the senior stars) is the "best of the rest" games listed in this column (they had 10 plus a "10B" game).

 

[opsooner]

I have very faint memories of that game and only recalled that we won a close one there. Always was a tough place to play.

 

[BCSooners]

Tops the bucket list of college arenas for me

 

[NMSooner'80]

The game in Albuquerque was the second of the two-game contract. OU pounded the Lobos in February of '88 in Norman, 120-100. The Albuquerque fishwraps whined about how "Tubbs ran it up" on the Lobos. The second game, after UNM changed coaches over the summer, was a lot more competitive. OU jumped out on top by 15 points in the first half but failed to "nail the coffin shut."

I can still mentally picture the shot that wound up being the game-winner. With UNM up by two, 93-91, and about a minute to play, Tyrone Jones rose up out of the right corner and stuck a three. The other big play in the final seconds was a steal by Blaylock with the score 99-96. He was fouled and made the first foul shot to pretty much clinch it (although he missed the second FT). Stacey King, who seriously considered signing with UNM at one point, had 24 points (after scoring 31 in Norman as a junior).

That was a really big deal in Albuquerque. They had students camping out for tickets. Unfortunately, the series ended with that game. Tubbs was pissed about some cheap shots by the same newspapers, and he also wasn't happy with people throwing coins on the floor over officials' calls. So that helped kill what could have been a nice regional rivalry.

 

[Stikboy]

I've always heard about the Pit, and I was an early teen when that game happened. Best memories of OU basketball. I can't remember if I watched it on TV. But funny this comes up... Last night UNM was playing Steve Alford's Nevada crew in the Pit on some channel I was browsing by. And yes, the fans were loud and it seemed to be a great atmosphere and a very tough place to play. You have to give them credit because the students are probably still on break. UNM seemed to be somewhat handling them but i'm not sure who won. Richard Pitino coaching the Lobos now. I think Alford had coached there before maybe..

 

[NMSooner'80]

UNM won, 82-81, in overtime. Nevada tied it with two foul shots at the end of regulation. C.J. Noland later hit a three to tie the game with about 1:30 to play. The winning shot was a busted play where the star point guard (Donovan Dent) fell down trying to drive into the lane but wasn't called for traveling. He somehow got the ball to their center, who shot from 15 and made it as the horn was going off. Of course, the place went nuts.

Alford used to coach there about 10 years ago. They weren't happy with him for bolting to UCLA, which fired him a few years later. His top assistant now, Craig Neal, replaced him but didn't do so well. Paul Weir, who everyone thought would be good, failed miserably after his first pretty good season. Pitino Jr. has been there for about four years now.

 

[WaymanFan]

I remember that game as well. UNM had a pretty solid team so it was a better win than initially anticipated. OU put together a very tough non-conference schedule that year and won most of those games, but struggled in March of 1989.

As for New Mexico, that was the start of the very underrated Dave Bliss era. Most don't realize this, but he won 20+ games every year but one that he coached them (coached for about a decade there). The reason UNM did not get more notoriety is because those Bliss teams usually struggled in March...but most schools going to The Pit came away with a "Big L".

 

[NMSooner'80]

One of the overlooked "great Pit games" in that article was one where current OU radio commentator Kevin Henry, a sophomore at UNM at the time, made three foul shots with a second left to beat Fresno State (Tark's last team, I think) by two. One of their guys tried to psych him out before he went to the line, and he just told the guy, "This game is OVER."

The article came out the same day as the long-overdue story of the firing of New Mexico State's reprobate of an Athletic Director. He presided over a mess, and he somehow avoided getting canned after the big sexual hazing scandal of 2022 within the men's basketball program.

That mess also included a bad situation at the UNM-NMSU football game, which I've mentioned before, where a couple of Aggie basketball players duked it out with some "normal sized" students from UNM under the bleachers at NMSU's stadium. People sent cellphone videos to the athletic department to examine, and instead of being appalled that his tall athletes were beating up smaller non-athletes, he was strongly rumored to have laughed it up over seeing those guys "whoop some Lobo ass." One of those guys involved was that Avery kid who's now at OSU. The other was a guy named Mike Peake, who was lured to the UNM campus two months later by a girl who was friends with the guy he victimized at the football game. It was a stupid thing for the UNM student to do, because he got into a shootout with Peake and died at the scene. It was also stupid of Peake, though he got off on "self defense," to have a gun with him on a basketball road trip. The whole NMSU bunch tried to hide the gun and got caught by NM State Police on the trip back to Cruces.

The sexual hazing thing was a disgraceful situation within the team, which was why they canceled that season. But that total lack of discipline in their beloved basketball program (which before that had received almost no media scrutiny historically in Albuquerque, Las Cruces or El Paso) was a pretty good indicator of how bad that mess really was.