Lobos are learning as they go
Expectations for UNM don’t yet match up with experience on roster
There’s a reason the players who were probably the most consistent performers in the first week of the University of New Mexico basketball season were who they were.
While expectations have been back to the old sky high norms of yesteryear for the Lobos fan base entering this season, the fact is the roster Paul Weir has put together is not only one that is largely new playing together, but one that doesn’t have much Division I experience at all.
And, as the Lobos (1-0) are set to host Iona (1-0) tonight for their first regular season home game on the schedule, the growing pains clearly haven’t gone away just yet.
“We don’t have a lot of experience playing at this level,” Weir said. “We might have a lot of guys who have played at a high level where they were, but this is really still the first go for a lot of these guys playing a DI basketball game.”
The most consistent Lobo so far this season has probably been senior Dane Kuiper, who entered the season with 85 career games played and 39 starts. Anthony Mathis (69/11) has been pretty solid, too, including going for 25 points in Saturday’s exhibition game and hitting the game-winner last week
at Cal. State-Northridge.
But after that, only four of the next 10 available Lobos on the roster had played a Division I game entering this season with only Vance Jackson, the sophomore transfer from Connectitcut, having actually started more than 14 games.
“Tone and Dane are still, they’re our rocks right now,” Weir said. “They’re really kind of getting us through this little initial period of the season while we get everyone else (on the team) their legs under them . ... Without Dane and Tone’s steady leadership right now, we’d be really far off.”
Of course, there are 200 career DI games played and 92 career DI starts on the Lobos bench, too, in JaQuan Lyle (out for the season with an Achilles injury), Carlton Bragg (eligible to play on Dec. 16) and Zane Martin (must sit out this season due to NCAA rules after transferring from Towson).
The point is, Weir knows there may be more talent on this year’s team than a season ago, but he also knows it isn’t a roster that has played many minutes at this level. And it’s something he knows they better get past soon.
“(Iona) is a very good basketball team we’re about to play on Tuesday night,” Weir said. “We’re very aware of that.”
Weir admits there is still a process of reminding his team of its inexperience and what that will mean in games like tonight against a Gaels team that, unlike Cal. State-Northridge last week, actually has plenty of expectations of its own entering this season. Iona was picked to finish third in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference and in nine seasons under head coach Tim Cluess has played in five NCAA Tournaments and two NITs.
“What’s very encouraging (with the Lobos) is they have something about them,” Weir said. “They have a very good confidence about them. They have a belief that they’re going to win, that they’re good.”
The Lobos, as Weir noted after Saturday’s exhibition blowout victory, have played six halves of basketball so far this season (two in a scrimmage, two in the CSUN game and two in Saturday’s exhibition). In only one of those halves, by the coach’s estimation, has the team met his expectations on the defensive side of the court.
Mathis, the sharpshooter who hit four 3-pointers this season (that doesn’t count the 5-of-5 showing he had in Saturday’s exhibition), knows the team’s offense will give them a chance to win a lot of games this season. But what will it take to beat Iona?
“Defend, defend, defend,” Mathis said. “Guard the ball and rebound. We don’t do that enough right now. We emphasize it in practice every single day then when the lights come on, we forget everything we do in practice. We really have to work on that if we want to get to where we think we can.”
Then again, there is that whole offensive thing they’ve got going. In particular, the team has a roster full of players who, minus Vladimir Pinchuk, all have the coach’s blessing and green light on shooting 3-pointers any time they’re open.
The Lobos shot 42.3 percent from 3-point range against the Matadors last week on 11-of-26 shooting) and hit 15-of-27 (55.6) from beyond the arc on Saturday.
“I think it’s an important part of our team every season,” Weir said of the 3-point shot. “It was last year. It is this year. We recruit shooters. I think we can shoot the ball better this year than we could last year and last year we broke a school record for 3s. So, we want to get them up. We practice them. We shoot them. We play for them. We play the style to set up getting open and getting loose for some 3s.
“Hopefully we’ll be able to shoot the ball like that (like UNM did on Saturday). We’re not going to shoot the ball like that every night percentage wise, but we have some really good shooters.”