What New Mexico coach Richard Pitino said after NCAA Tournament victory over Marquette

The 10th-seeded New Mexico men’s basketball team rode stars Donovan Dent and Nelly Junior Joseph to a 75-66 victory over seventh-seeded Marquette in Friday’s NCAA Tournament first round game. 

Dent, the Mountain West Conference player of the year, shook off eight turnovers to tally 21 points, six assists and two blocks. Junior Joseph controlled the interior with 19 points and seven rebounds for MWC regular-season champion New Mexico (27-7). 

It was the Lobos’ first NCAA Tournament victory since 2012.

“Terrific win for our program,” New Mexico head coach Richard Pitino said. “I’ve got a lot of respect for Marquette, Shaka (Smart) does an amazing job. I just thought at the end of the game, we buckled down and got stops.”

David Joplin led Big East power Marquette (23-11) with 28 points. The Lobos limited star guard Kam Jones to 15 points and five assists. 

Here are the highlights from Pitino’s postgame press conference. 

On Dent coming through 

“Donny was struggling a little bit, and we just tried to keep him positive. And he made some huge plays down the stretch. … We were trying to slip out of some of those ball screens, because they were really crowding him. I thought the other guys — their spacing — allowed Donovan to get going a little bit more. We slipped some stuff, got him downhill, and he was terrific.

“He’s one of the best point guards in the country. Stevie Mitchell is a phenomenal defender, and he’s going to do that to a lot of players. So he had to get over the turnover part of it and go step up and win us the game. In crunch time, he made huge plays.”

On New Mexico’s toughness

“We’re on late a lot in the West. But if you’ve watched us, we’re a pretty darn tough team. I mean, we were 17-3 in a four-bid league. These guys have scratched and clawed and made winning plays all year.”

On New Mexico’s defensive length

“We were fortunate to be in this tournament last year and played a really good Clemson team. I remember watching it, and I really liked our team last year. I mean, we won 26 games, we won the Mountain West Tournament, we did a lot of great things. But we felt like in order to get back here and win a matchup like this, we needed to recruit bigger guards. 

“The defense — because of the length that we added, whether it’s Filip (Borovicanin), whether it’s CJ (Noland) — has been huge. We wanted to go toe-to-toe with all of these programs from a size standpoint. So it all started with recruiting, identifying where we thought some shortcomings could be. And I think you saw tonight, we made some huge, huge steals. Mustapha (Amzil) had some big steals, Tru (Washington) as well. That length really helps.”

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