The Pit was hot Monday night.
And the poorly-functioning air conditioning in the half-century-old arena wasn’t even the worst of it.
With a nationally-televised audience watching, the Lobos and Aggies — or in this instance The Enchantment, a team of mostly former UNM players and the Panamaniacs, a team of mostly former NMSU players — put on an old-fashioned rivalry slugfest that had emotions running high and gave an announced Pit crowd of 3,532 a chance to roar as if it were one of the packed houses of yesteryear.
Joe Furstinger scored the final eight points of the game and Albuquerque native Scott Bamforth, the only non-former Lobo on the roster, had a team-high 24 points to lead The Enchantment to a nerve-wracking 89-82 win over the Panamaniacs in the opening round of the New Mexico Regional of the $1 million winner-take-all The Basketball Tournament.