New Mexico St. 82, Louisiana Tech 57 updated 1:27 a.m. LAS VEGAS (AP) - Wendell McKines scored 27 and grabbed 14 rebounds, and New Mexico State claimed its third Western Athletic Conference tournament title and an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament with a dominant 82-57 win over Louisiana Tech on Saturday night. The Aggies (26-9) will make their 19th NCAA tournament appearance and second under coach Marvin Menzies to go along with winning the conference tournament in 2010. The Aggies will enter the NCAA tournament having won nine of 10 games. For the second straight game, the Aggies built a double-digit lead within the opening minutes. But unlike its narrow semifinal win over Hawaii, New Mexico State never let Louisiana Tech back in. After the Aggies took a 14-4 lead, the Bulldogs trimmed the deficit into single digits only once. Trevor Gaskins led Louisiana Tech (18-16) with 24 points, but the Bulldogs shot just 33 percent and made 3 of 18 3-pointers. Louisiana Tech was attempting to become the third No. 5 seed in WAC history to win the tournament title and claim the school's first NCAA bid since 1991 when the Bulldogs were champs of the America South Conference. Instead, they became New Mexico State's tune up for the NCAAs where the Aggies depth, athleticism and size might make them a dangerous lower seed. The 25-point margin of victory was the largest in a title game in WAC tournament history. McKines capped a stellar tournament by making 12 of 16 shots, finishing one point off his career high, and recording his 17th 20-point game of the season. He was lauded with chants of "MVP, MVP" from Aggies' fans after knocking down consecutive 3-poitners in the final 3 1/2 minutes. Daniel Mullings and Tyrone Watson both added 12 points. After finishing second in the conference during the regular season, the expectation was the Aggies would need to solve regular-season champ Nevada if they wanted to get back into the NCAAs. But those plans were thrown off when Louisiana Tech stunned the Wolf Pack in the semifinals. Instead of Nevada's athleticism, the Aggies faced a Bulldogs squad they beat twice during the regular season - almost by identical scores - and where NMSU held size and style advantage on the interior. The Aggies used all of that size and length to make the Louisiana Tech's first title game appearance as a member of the WAC miserable. On the defensive end, Mullings smothered WAC freshman of the year Raheem Appleby, while McKines, Watson, Hamidu Rahman and Tshilidzi Nephawe made sure shots were challenged inside and offensive rebounds were few. New Mexico State started quickly again, although not as dominant as the semifinals when it jumped out to a 22-2 lead on Hawaii. The Aggies scored the first eight and 14 of the first 18 points then later in the half used a 10-2 spurt to take a 20 point lead when McKines followed Laroche's miss. Half of McKines 12 points in the first half came off offensive rebounds. With 3 minutes left in the first half, McKines had already recorded his 19th double-double of the season and the Aggies scored 34 of their 38 first-half points in the paint. New Mexico State extended its lead to as many as 31 in the second half on a day where both the Aggies and New Mexico claimed NCAA bids in the same town hours apart. After controlling the pace and tempo in the semifinals against Nevada, the Bulldogs got outmuscled the entire first half by the Aggies. And while La Tech was unable to get anything established on the inside, its outside game was off target, too. The Bulldogs missed all 10 3-point attempts in the first half, a night after making its first seven shots from beyond the arc. Appleby added 15 points, but no other Louisiana Tech player scored more than four. Follow Tim Booth on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ByTimBooth