The Sam Houston men’s basketball season officially ended Wednesday night with 107-83 road loss to the New Mexico Lobos in the first round of the National Invitation Tournament (NIT).

The Bearkats finished with a record of 22-12, a nine-win improvement from the previous season.

SHSU fell behind early in the game and trailed 51-39 at halftime. The Lobos outscored them 56-44 in the second half.

“We picked a really bad day to not play hard,” Sam Houston head coach Chris Mudge said after the loss. “I can count on one hand the amount of times that we have been out toughed this year that’s part of what this team great is our physicality, intensity, and toughness, and we did not do that tonight.”

CJ Beaumont scored a team-high and career-high of 22 points for the Bearkats. Jacob Walker and Kashie Natt both 15 finished with 15 points, while Damon Nicholas Jr added 12 points.

Tomislav Buljan led the Lobos with 22 points, Uriah Tenette scored 20 points and Deyton Albury finished with 15 points.

The Bearkats shot 48.5%, while the Lobos shot 52.7%.

“We can’t let this one point on the journey define the whole journey because we’ve done some unbelievable things together,” Mudge said. “We finished second in one of the best mid-major-plus conferences in the country, we won a whole bunch of games with seven and eight players for most of the year.”

“We have faced more adversity than most teams do in a couple years, and we have really stuck together, so it’s really unfortunate, and I hate it for our guys that we played that way. New Mexico is a phenomenal team, they do a great job and they forced some of that to happen us.”

Now it’s the offseason for the Bearkats, and they will be bringing in new talent from high school and the transfer portal, hoping to take the next step after a strong 2025-2026 season.