Category: Men’s Basketball
Zach’s Reacts: MW Tournament Quarterfinal vs. Utah State
In a game that looked like an upset win against Utah State (26-6), the Lobos (14-18) were instead unable to finish off the game and saw their season come to an end. There is plenty to talk about this game, so here are the things that caught my eye from media row:
Zach’s Reacts: Mountain West Opening Round vs. Wyoming
What looked like could be a quick exit for the Lobos (14-17) in the Mountain West Tournament instead featured a furious Lobo comeback in the second half to beat Wyoming (8-24), 78-68. It was a game that had its fair share of momentum swings and was an emotional rollercoaster, but left us ready for another day of Lobo basketball. Here are the things that caught my eye during the opening round of the Mountain West Tournament:
MW 2018-19 Prediction Poll
Here is our Prediction Poll for the 2018-2019 MW Season. We are looking for more responses this year and decided to do a post on the website instead of just using Twitter. Both links are the same so you should be good to go at either spot.
Link below:
Zach’s Reacts: Lobos vs. North Texas
After dropping another home game to North Texas, the Lobos fell to 5-5 on the season and left plenty of questions and observations from my seat. This is the first of Zach’s Reacts, in which I will give his immediate post-game thoughts. Each paragraph will be a different topic and I hope that the order works.
Let’s Get WeirD: Schedule, Bold Predictions, and MW Picks
A new season brings new hopes, dreams, and expectations for Lobo Men’s Basketball Fans. This post mostly focuses on the first two. We’ll take a quick look at the non-conference schedule, make some bold predictions, and fill out our preseason MW ballots. Let’s do this.
Men’s Basketball Season Preview: 2018-2019
The time has finally come for year two of the Coach Paul Weir Era! After a promising first season, with the Lobo faithful buying into the Weir’s vision for the program, there is plenty of reason to be excited to the season to begin. There are a lot of interesting stories to watch as the season unfolds, as it promises to be a memorable one. Today, we look at some of the possible stories to watch, what we will have our eyes on, an overview of the roster, and how the Lobos could stand in the Mountain West and in the NCAA.
The Difficulty of Scheduling: An UNM Story
Scheduling for Men’s Basketball has changed a lot over the last 10 plus years. Multi-team events (MTEs) have become vogue and have helped some schools form their schedules. These exempt tournaments are good things if you end up in a good MTE with potential good wins on your schedule, but if you end up having a bad three games in four days, you could find it difficult to be in the at-large conversation. At least, if you aren’t in a Big 6 conference (Power 5 + Big East). MTEs have shifted how Big 6 Conference teams plan the rest of their non-conference schedules, as they lose the need to go on the road for home and home matchups against non-regional, non-Big 6 teams. This has hurt teams in the non-Big 6, because the home games against Big 6 schools are uncommon and really only come into fruition if you are in a great recruiting location (Las Vegas, San Diego, and similar locations) or if you have a local player that went to a Big 6 school and their coach wants their player to have a homecoming game of sorts.
One school that has been affected by scheduling in recent years is UNM, who has been especially affected this year when their MTE fell through with both the Alaskan Shootout ending and the planned event with Saint Mary’s changing scope. Beyond that, they want to schedule good teams for home games and want to have a couple of home and homes with Big 6 schools each year. But that has become more difficult as well.
Paul Weir’s Ten Degrees of Separation: The Road from NMSU to UNM
In the spring of 2017, Paul Weir was named as the new head coach at UNM, filling the open position that was vacant after the firing of Craig Neal. While it is easy to say that Coach Weir was a great hire after his excellent first season as the Head Coach at NMSU, there were a few things that needed to happen for Coach Weir to even be considered for the position. In order to do so, we have to go back to early 2016 and look at the dominos that had to fall for UNM to hire Paul Weir:
Mountain West Men’s Basketball Scheduling 2019
At noon today, the Mountain West announced the conference schedule for the 2018-2019 season. While there are some conferences where the schedule doesn’t matter too much because of the round-robin system they employ, the MW has a conference slate that influence who wins the conference, or even who gets first-round byes in the MW Conference Tournament. Last season, it is impossible to deny that they Lobos benefitted greatly from the schedule, as they didn’t have to travel to San Diego and didn’t have to face Nevada at home. While there could be a debate on how much impact it had on their final standing, but there was an impact. With the Conference at 11 teams and an 18 game schedule, each team will play eight teams twice (home and road) and two teams once (one home, one road). For conference standing’s sake, you want to have your bye games to be games that you could lose, and don’t want games taken away that you should win. Also within the schedule, there will be periods of rough patches, which we will look at where these could pop-up for each team.