Tonight, the resurgent Lobo men’s basketball team hosted Boise State for a game with some significance to the conference results. Boise was in second place in the Mountain West Conference, two games ahead of a third place Lobo squad. A win for UNM meant they would shave a game off of Boise’s lead over them, and the Lobos had the moxey to appear they could do it. Winners of seven straight in the Pit, an eighth consecutive win did not seem out of reach.

And after the game started and got serious, the Lobos took a lead, and slowly built it, somehow pulling away from Boise and building a cushion. At one point, UNM was up by thirteen points in the first half. When the second half began, UNM continued to look strong holding Boise at a steady distance. But then the last quarter of play began, and so did the slide. With seven minutes left in the game, UNM forgot how to shoot a basket, and Boise just attacked the basket repeatedly with drives from the top of the key followed by offensive rebounds and putbacks.

And at sixteen seconds left in the forty minute contest, after a series of Lobo missed free throws, turnovers, and missed box outs, Chandler Hutchison put Boise up for the first time in the game with another drive to the basket.

Moments later, the final buzzer sounded, and Boise, the team that had been trailing UNM all evening until the sixteen second mark, was the victor.

It ain’t over until it’s over, they say. Ain’t that the truth.

I wonder how many times in life we miss out on something good or forfeit a bonus or a break because we fail to finish.

I say “we”, but I certainly think mostly about myself, and my proclivity to, at times, fail to finish.

Sixteen seconds.