For those wondering what the point is of the UTEP men’s basketball team playing out the string in a season of many struggles, the answer came Saturday night against New Mexico State.
In front of a loud, rocking, large Don Haskins Center crowd, the Miners beat their biggest rivals 91-88 in a wildly entertaining game and that right there is the point of all this.
In some bigger picture, UTEP increased its chances of slipping into the Conference USA tournament, it continued its upward trend in its chase for .500, it showed the grit and fight it will need to get through a touch stretch of schedule that starts Wednesday, Feb. 11, at Jacksonville State.
Four of the next five are on the road, which to say the least has not been kind to the Miners, and the other is a noon Saturday, Feb. 14, date at home against league-unbeaten Liberty that is now 20-3 overall.
UTEP hits this stretch with momentum because of what happened against New Mexico State. Winning gave the games ahead more meaning, but there was plenty of meaning in what happened Saturday night in front of 7,862 fans.
“That was a great college basketball game,” coach Joe Golding said, and what was undeniable, at least from a UTEP perspective, is that the game was fun.
In a season that has seen its share of gloom, the Miners found some joy and purpose. That was meaning in and of itself. They created a memory.
Inevitably, though, there is the big-picture question, which centers around the climb to the league tournament. UTEP is in fairly solid shape right now for a top-10 finish that would extend the season, as the Miners are tied for ninth with head-to-head wins over the teams below them.
UTEP went into the Aggie game with a number of moral victories, including that heartbreaking loss at Sam Houston State last mid-week, and as dismissible as moral victories are, that general trend of playing better basketball did lead to a victory of the biggest kind.
What the Miners are showing right now is heart, and while that doesn’t always show in tangible ways, it showed up on the scoreboard against New Mexico State.
When UTEP willed its way back from a 10-point deficit in the final 6:30, it won battles for loose balls, it defended with purpose, it made a string of clutch shots that had eluded it much of the season.
As painful as the last-season loss to Sam Houston was, the Miners seemed to learn from it. This time, they got the late loose-ball rebounds, including one from Kaseem Watson with 27 seconds left in overtime when he tracked down Caleb Blackwell’s desperation 3 (that was probably after the shot clock; there was the kind of break UTEP hadn’t been getting) at midcourt.
If the referees call the shot clock violation, New Mexico State would have had the ball down two points and UTEP would have had to stop NMSU’s Jemel Jones, who at that point looked unstoppable.
Instead, Watson had a chance to get to the ball and get the game to the free-throw line, he did and UTEP capitalized on its big break.
Can the Miners turn this into a run? Did they really turn a corner? Or was this just one brilliant night?
Context will come in the three weeks to come. Right now UTEP can celebrate what it has, which is a chance to fight on.
Bret Bloomquist can be reached at bbloomquist@elpasotimes.com; @Bretbloomquist on X.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Analysis: UTEP Miners give meaning to season after big win over NMSU