SAN LUIS CAPISTRANO — The UTEP men’s basketball team knew scoring wouldn’t come easy after a fast start, the Miners are confident their defense can carry them when needed.
Their margin of error doesn’t include a 37% shooting night with 19 turnovers.
That’s what UTEP suffered through in its early-season battle of unbeatens against Bradley on Wednesday night in the SoCal Challenge. Despite playing some good defense of their own and fighting their way into the final seconds, the Miners fell to 5-1 after a 63-59 loss.
More: CUSA men’s basketball standings
Down the stretch
Bradley, the defending Missouri Valley Conference champion, improved to 5-0 after beating the Miners in a tournament championship game for the second time in three years. The Braves won the Don Haskins Sun Bowl Tournament in 2021.
Trailing almost the entire game (36:14 to be exact), two Tae Hardy 3-pointers trimmed a nine-point deficit to 57-54 with 1:31 left and the Miners got a stop, but Hardy’s drive to the basket was denied with 42 seconds remaining.
Bradley rebounded and made enough late free throws to survive. Leading 61-59 after an Otis Frazier three-point play with 4.4 seconds to play, Bradley made two final free throws to finish 14-of-17 from the line. UTEP was 13-of-18 from the stripe.
Quoting the coach
“I loved the fight in our guys in the second half,” coach Joe Golding said. “I don’t know why we didn’t do that in the first half. I don’t know if it was the nerves of being in this situation for the first time.
“Defensively I thought we were great, we were just not very good offensively. They are very, very good defensively, then offensively we tried to force too many things. We have to make the extra pass. …
“We have to learn from it, we’re six games in.”
UTEP didn’t have anyone in double figures until Hardy’s late charge gave him 15 points, then Frazier’s late three-point play pushed him to 11. Zid Powell and Calvin Solomon each had eight.
The Miners held Bradley to 41% and forced 15 turnovers, normally winning numbers but UTEP couldn’t find enough points.
How it happened
An early 12-2 run put Bradley up 21-14 and the Braves led the final 30:46. But the Miners never fell behind more than 11 — that was at halftime — and spent much of the game trailing between four and nine points.
Trailing 37-26 after allowing Bradley two baskets in the final 13 seconds of the first half, UTEP opened the second half with nine consecutive stops in the first five minutes but only cut the 11-point deficit to five and couldn’t get closer than four until the final 91 seconds.
That left them enough space for a late charge, but they had to be perfect down the stretch and couldn’t quite manage that.
“We have to get better offensively,” Golding said. “We’ve got to do a better job on two feet of shot making and making the extra pass. We didn’t score enough off their turnovers. We had some opportunities, we got nine straight stops but we didn’t score enough.
“That was our chance to get back in it.”
Up next
UTEP finishes up its West Coast swing with a Saturday game at Loyola Marymount. The 5 p.m. Mountain time tip will be carried on ESPN+ and 600 ESPN El Paso.
Bret Bloomquist can be reached at bbloomquist@elpasotimes.com; @Bretbloomquist on Twitter.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: UTEP men’s offense goes cold, Miners suffer first loss to Bradley
