Why should we have expected anything different from Saturday's Utah-New Mexico basketball game?
Of course, it was going to go down to the final seconds. In five games between the Utes and Lobos over the last two seasons, four had gone into overtime and the other was a one-point Lobo win last year in Salt Lake.
This year's thriller came down to Lawrence Borha's difficult baseline shot with 11.2 seconds left and a Utah defensive stop at the other end, giving Utah a 69-68 win before 9,676 at the Huntsman Center.
The victory keeps the Utes atop the Mountain West Conference standings at 5-2 and at 14-7 on the season, while the Lobos fell to 4-3 and 13-9.
For Borha, a senior who has been on the other side of several last-second losses in his career, being the hero of the victory was sweet redemption. Earlier this season, he had missed a possible game-winner in a one-point loss to Southwest Baptist and a possible game-tying shot against Idaho State, both in the final seconds.
He called his baseline floater from 10 feet out "lucky" and added "I've missed a lot of game-winning shots, so I'm just glad that one went down."
Ute coach Jim Boylen said, "That's a tough shot to make, a tough shot to win the game on."
Borha was probably the last player the ball was supposed to go to this time around. Down 68-67 with 28 seconds left, the Utes called a play for Tyler Kepkay, who was the overtime star Tuesday night against BYU but was having a miserable night with two points on 1-of-5 shooting.
When Kepkay got bottled up on the left side, he passed to Shaun Green, who drove along the left baseline. When three Lobos surrounded him, he found Borha in the right corner. After a head-fake, Borha dribbled toward the basket and lofted a high-arching shot from slightly behind the glass — and hit nothing but net.
After timeouts by both teams with 7.8 seconds left, Borha knocked the ball out of Roman Martinez's hands and, as the two battled for the loose ball near the Lobo bench, it came out to Chad Toppert, whose desperation 25-footer was short at the buzzer.
"I'm proud of the way we battled back," Boylen said. "We hung in there, hung in there. It was an uphill battle like the BYU game, but we made enough plays to win."
The Lobos didn't score over the last 2:55 of the game and couldn't score on their last three possessions, bungling the last two on turnovers.
After Martinez and Toppert each missed long shots, Daniel Faris traveled, trying to back down Luke Nevill with just over a minute left and the Lobos up 68-65.
The Utes scored on a pair of Nevill free throws with 56.5 seconds left, but after a UNM timeout, Dairese Gary stepped out of bounds trying to drive the baseline and hit Toppert in the corner. That gave the Utes the chance to win with 28 seconds left, and they came through.
Borha led the Utes with 15 points, including three 3-pointers, while Nevill and Luka Drca each scored 11. Green and Carlon Brown each scored nine, while Jordan Cyphers scored eight points in just four minutes of action.
Faris, the 6-9 senior, outplayed Nevill most of the game, finishing with 18 points and eight rebounds, while Martinez scored 14 points on 4-of-7 shooting from 3-point range. The Lobos finished with 54 percent shooting from the field and 61.5 percent (8-of-13) from 3-point range.
The Utes' effort ranged from awful to brilliant Saturday. They were terrible early on when the Lobos jumped out to a seven-point lead and led 24-17 with 6:36 left in the first half. Then, sparked by Cyphers, the Utes woke up and reeled off 14 straight points to seemingly take control and roll into halftime with a 38-30 lead.
Early in the second half, the Utes hit another lull and, before they knew it, the Lobos led 49-46 on the first of Martinez' four second-half 3-pointers. For the rest of the game, neither team led by more than three points as the lead changed hands.
The Lobos took a 68-65 lead with 2:55 left on a drive by Nate Garth, but it turned out to be their last points of the game.
"I've got to give them credit," said New Mexico coach Steve Alford. "They made one extra play. We had it twice and they had it once, we didn't make the play and they did."
This week the Utes head out on the road for games at TCU on Wednesday and at Wyoming on Saturday before returning home for a pair of games the following week against San Diego State and Air Force.
E-mail: sor@desnews.com