LOBOS AT HOME
UNM men’s basketball team gets a visit from Wyoming tonight
Spending Tuesday night together catching up on old times wasn’t anything new for Allen Edwards and Eddie Nuñez.
Close friends since they were high school basketball teammates in Miami, the two have been doing so for more than two decades any time they get the chance.
But tonight will be a little different.
Edwards, the second-year head coach of the Wyoming men’s basketball team, will lead his Cowboys (11-5, 2-1 Mountain West) into Dreamstyle Arena tonight to play the University of New Mexico (7-10, 2-2), where Nuñez hasn’t even completed his first half year as the Lobos’ athletic director.
“I consider him a really good
friend, but also a guy who has helped me in this business in the sense of how to approach it, how to carry myself and just how to work,” said Edwards, who was 39 when he landed the Wyoming job, his first head coaching position.
The two grew up in Miami where, as Nuñez says, Edwards came from “a basketball rich family” that included two older brothers who were high school All-Americans. Edwards, who later starred at Kentucky, was a starting point guard as a sophomore on the same national powerhouse Miami Senior High School team that Nuñez played on in the 1990s. That team was led by Florida coaching legend Marcos “Shakey” Rodriguez and had assistants such as Anthony Grant, now the head coach at Dayton, and Frank Martin, now the head coach at South Carolina.
“Allen was a consummate professional,” Nuñez said. “I mean, he would work his tail off. At 6-5, 6-6 he was a point guard who started as a sophomore for our high school, which was a top-10 program every year . ...
“He’s one of those guys who was always just such a workaholic and loves the game of basketball so much and understood it. You could put him at any position and, bam! It was easy to him.”
The fact that Edwards was a head coach by the time he was 40 doesn’t surprise Nuñez, who landed his first AD job shortly after turning 40. The two credit each other for their help professionally through the years.
“He’s just a good guy, man,” Edwards said. “He’s a guy that, even when I was an assistant, even now as a head coach, there’s times where I’ve leaned on him for some guidance within this business. He’s always been straight up and honest with me about just keeping your head down and continuing to work and everything will work out for you.”
They both still pull for each other, but not since their college days — when Edwards starred for the national champion Kentucky Wildcats and Nuñez was playing for the SEC rival Florida Gators — have they had such a head-to-head matchup like tonight.
“They kicked our rear ends a couple times, but we were fortunate enough to go in there and get a win,” said Nuñez of their college days, referring to the Feb. 1, 1998, Florida win in Rupp Arena. “... It was one of the biggest games I was able to be a part of. They were favored to win it all and for us to go in there and get a win, man. I haven’t gotten many on him, in the head to head, but I remember that one.” And as for tonight? “I love him and I always want him to do well any other time except when they play our team,” Nuñez said. KENTUCKY COMPARISONS: Earlier this season, UNM coach Paul Weir posted in every Lobo player’s locker the box score of the 1996 Kentucky Wildcats National Championship season — one Edwards was a part of — pointing out 10 players averaged at least 10 minutes per game and none more than 27.
Nobody is saying the talent is the same, but Edwards sees the philosophical similarities, too.
“This team kind of reminds me of the way I played in college — a lot of pressing, the whole game. 94 feet,” Edwards said. “They’re aggressive (in) style of play. The coach is trying to build his culture . ... I think he’s done a really good job given they lost so much with guys who either graduated or transferring out. He has them playing with such a great intensity. It seems like their guys are about in to that style of play.”