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Utah's Luke Nevill is difficult to hide.

At 7-foot-1, 265 pounds, he's simply too tall, too big.

But if the Utes were smart, they'd scramble up their stats, maybe put in some kind of computer software designed to spread points among the whole team.

And do their best to hide their leading scorer from the Lobos' radar defense Tuesday in The Pit.

Because it has become obvious that the New Mexico Lobos are going to do their nastiest not to let the enemy's stud kill the Lobos on the court.

The Lobos are pretty good at targeting the opponent's big gun and doing their best to make sure Mr. Stud is shooting blanks against UNM.

The Lobos did it to San Diego's top two guns holding Brandon Johnson and Gyno Pomare to a combined 17.6 points below their season average. Pomare had a season-low four points.

The Lobos did it to Texas Tech's top two sharpshooters, holding Martin Zeno and Alan Voskuil to 25.3 points below their combined average. Zeno didn't score.

They did it to UTEP's Stefon Jackson, holding him to 8.5 points below his average. UNM also held Wyoming's Brandon Ewing below his average, despite playing two overtimes and allowing Wyoming to score 92 points.

And Saturday in The Pit, the Lobos put the clamps on Air Force's Tim Anderson, who came into The Pit averaging 15.1 points, and scored five.

Anderson did not score in the first half and didn't make a basket until there was 4:37 left to play and his team was down by 22 points.

The Lobos won Saturday's game 59-44. UNM led by 15 at the half and won by 15.

The Lobos were paced by senior J.R. Giddens, who had his sixth double-double of the season with 15 points and 12 rebounds.

Giddens also is one of the Lobos responsible for all this "targeting" on defense. Surprise — the Lobos best offensive player also is UNM's best defensive player.

"I thought the difference was that J.R. did a great job defensively, and I think our team really feeds off that just because of who he is as a player," Lobos coach Steve Alford said.

"For us to hold them (Air Force) to 27 percent shooting — their worst of the year — says a lot about what we did defensively."

Giddens often is called upon to guard the opponent's best perimeter player because Giddens is a smooth combination of height and quickness.

But don't expect Giddens to be assigned to Nevill on Tuesday.

Giddens is 6-foot-5. He weighs about 200 pounds. That's 8 inches shorter and 65 pounds lighter than Nevill.

So, who is going to stop Nevill?

Maybe nobody, but the assignment probably will go the "committee" route.

Put 6-9 Daniel Faris on Nevill at first with weakside help coming from Giddens.

If Faris gets into foul trouble or gets tired, bring in 6-10 Monquel Pegues or 6-8 Johnnie Harris and let them pound away on Nevill.

"I know our coach will be (telling us) that we got to move our feet, front (Nevill), rebound, box him out," Pegues said. "If we can keep him out of the game, then everything else should be smooth."

So far, when UNM has targeted the other team's stud or studs, the Lobos have found pretty good success.

But there's a difference this time.

The bad guy has never been 7-foot-1, 265 pounds.