Utah Utes basketball: Gritty overtime win by Utes

LAS VEGAS — Well it finally happened Thursday night.

The Utah basketball team found a way to win a tight game, hanging on to defeat New Mexico 82-80 in overtime in the quarterfinals of the Mountain West Conference Tournament at the Thomas & Mack Center.

With the victory, the Utes move on to play UNLV tonight at 10 p.m. in a rematch of their game six days earlier here, when the Rebels won 70-63.

Luke Nevill scored on a dunk shot off a feed by Luka Drca with 21 seconds left then blocked Darren Prentice's shot at the other end with eight seconds left. Lawrence Borha added a free throw with five seconds left and then J.R. Giddens missed a driving layup at the buzzer in a dizzying sequence.

After the final shot didn't fall, Utah coach Jim Boylen jumped into the arms of an assistant coach and the Utes celebrated a rare close victory.

"I guess that's why they call it March Madness," said Boylen.

"Obviously I'm proud of my team. We've been there before, we've been in these situations before and lost every way you can and we hadn't got a break and hadn't got a bounce."

The fact that the game ended as it did, wasn't surprising, considering that three of the last four Utah-UNM games have gone into overtime and the other was a one-point Lobo win.

Nevill led the Utes with 26 points and 8 rebounds, while Borha added 13 and Shaun Green 12. Giddens led the Lobos with 28 points and 17 rebounds.

In the overtime, the Utes took a quick three-point lead, but the Lobos came back to take the lead on a pair of free throws by J.R.

Giddens with 2:23 left. But Nevill gave the Utes the lead with a dunk at the 1:01, only to see the Lobos re-take the lead on Giddens' dunk with 30 seconds left.

Nevill made another dunk with 21 seconds left and then he came up big as Prentice drove to the basket.

"I saw him going to the basket and I knew it was going to be close and I might goaltend, but I knew I had to go for it," said Nevill.

In regulation, the Utes blew an 11-point second half lead and saw the Lobos cut the lead to one at 71-70. With 34 seconds left, Nevill made one of two free throws and the Lobos' Chad Toppert was fouled with 13 seconds left and made both free throws to tie the score at 72.

Utah had one more chance, but Luka Drca's pass to Nevill went out of bounds on the Ute baseline.

Many experts felt the Lobos needed to win this game to assure themselves a spot as an at-large team in the NCAA Tournament. Now they'll have to sweat it out over the weekend until the NCAA brackets are announced Sunday afternoon.